


ANDROMEDA

by batarella



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham Knight Genesis (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Action, Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Getting lost in space, Reader Is A Cyborg, Slow Burn, Space Adventure, Space Opera, Space Pirates, and a vengeful past, the slowest burn, with anger issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:41:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batarella/pseuds/batarella
Summary: Jason Todd is lost in an unknown realm light years away from Earth.With not much hope to find his way back, his only companion is a cruel alien cyborg from the enemy fleet,  one he’ll have to get along with to survive.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Original Character(s), Jason Todd/Original Female Character(s), Jason Todd/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	1. where the hell are we

**Prologue**

_Light._

_This void, one so familiar, was infinite. And so it was, even if there could be, at some point, an end._

_An endless void no hand can reach into, so vast no beam could enlighten._

_An idea could not describe half the realities of what was out there all along. And what was out there was larger than souls, older than gods, a space so opulent with entities not so many could comprehend._

_How could she, or anyone at all, have thought of themselves as anything more than a speck, even when not devoid of life, in such a universe so unlimited?_

_No._

_Not when it took this long to know all that._

_Not until now, when she marveled over the stars as if they were this light so new, a newborn brought into the world having laid eyes on their mother the first time their eyes open._

_She was flying._

_She was as light as the stars. She was the stars._

_Her palm hit the glass, hadn’t realized she was reaching for those very beings as if she could hold them in her hand until it stopped her._

_“Like it’s your first time,” Jason said. “Look at the stars like you’ve never seen one in your life.”_

_In its truest sense, perhaps there didn’t have to be any pretending._

_If the cosmos had always been this breathtaking wonder, so infinite and incomprehensively immense, that at any point, she’d be left standing there as quiet as she’d never been, then she’s never actually seen the stars. Not once in her life._

_Not until now._

_\-----_

**3 months ago.**

Sometimes, he needed at least just a gentle reminder that he was lucky to be alive at all.

Or, more accurately, that he was alive _again._

Because some days, on days when life was not but to be taken advantage of, to say that it should be taken advantage of and use it to such limits that should never, _ever,_ be reached nor should be considered, he didn’t care much that it was luck or the work of realities being this fucked up sense that he never really understood.

This was that limit.

His bike was thunderous, unpleasantly screeching like the tires didn’t like being skidded against the cement, when Jason Todd used the trunk of a pickup truck in the middle of being towed as a ramp. As he reached the top, he proved, as he often did, that he couldn’t care less if that landing was something he’d pull off or if it defied every physics law in the book.

Fortunately, it didn’t. He was flying, at least for a while, and gravity was kind enough to him not to let his tires break under the weight of both him and the bike when after he’d soared through the air, he almost smashed the sidewalk he landed on just a split second before he sped off again.

All that thought on whether or not he’d live through it didn’t make so much as a pitstop in his mess of a head.

All he thought was the stolen sports car breaking every traffic rule imaginable and the millions of dollars stuck to its trunk.

People were screaming, some in fear and some with slurs and curses not even he would blurt out, but they’d fade just as he’d pass by them. And he passed through four intersections in under a minute. That car _really_ wouldn’t stop.

When they pulled out a gun, he knew this chase shouldn’t last any longer, even as long as he would have hoped.

They called out his name, Hood, to taunt him further, but all they got out of him was a snicker, and a breathy growl that came from both his stomach and his mouth. He was hungry. Almost dinner time. All he had in his pockets were about three bars of chocolate he got from the pantry for when there might not be much time for him to stop by some diner that night. Which he didn’t.

He swerved a whole round of bullets, drifted off into an alley before suddenly bursting out onto the not so empty streets again. They kept shooting. A bullet grazed his jacket.

Just as he pulled on the throttle to keep up with the car, his comms started acting up.

_“All units. Report. Emergency at the Watchtower. I need all hands on deck.”_

Watchtower?

The car drifted to the right, and Jason grabbed onto a street pole to swerve him into the same direction.

_“Nightwing. Red Robin. Batgirl. Spoiler. Signal. Orphan. Robin. And Red Hood. I have your coordinates. Drop everything you're doing now and step into the boom tubes as soon as you see one.”_

“ _Woah_ , woah, hold on.”

He pushed onto the side of his helmet, skidded to the left just before another bullet would have hit his forehead.

“Bruce,” he said into his comms. “I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“This is an emergency.”

“ _I told you_ ,” he said. “I’m done working with you guys.”

“This is nothing to negotiate. Report at the Watchtower ASAP.”

Bruce was gone mid-sentence that was half-filled with profanity.

He wasn’t going anywhere. Not after last week when Bruce almost sent him to the police just by shooting a man three inches too near from his chest that would have been fatal. Hell, not after every week when their untimely arguments spurred on and there was nothing that convinced him that he was at all welcome into that shitty family in the first place.

He pulled on his bike, sped between two passing cars and almost shocked every passerby out of consciousness, but the car sped on as well. He pulled harder, leaned in to gain speed. Closer. _Closer._

The car turned right, and the drift was deafening to hear even with his helmet on.

And in front of him, where the car had just been, a spiraling portal of white beams and an emptiness at the center so barren of light flashed out of nowhere, suspended in thin air. It grew larger until it was big enough for him to just slip through. _Boom Tubes._

He drifted to the right to avoid it, to where he saw the car speed into, and so dangerously did he lose his balance when the crowds that piled around him squandered and panicked. His tires would give out, and his hand started to ache. The car turned to the left at the intersection, almost slamming into a truck, before another boom tube appeared where it’d left.

“Shit.” He swerved around it again. At the fourth time it happened, something rang in his comms.

“Cyborg-“

“Jason, this isn’t the time to play around.”

“I’m not playing around,” he said. “Not interested. I’ve got my own matters to deal with.”

“I’ve got twenty other Titans members to boom tube in. I don’t have time for this.”

“In case you forgot, I’m not part of the league _or_ the Titans-“

“Batman asked for all of you.”

“Fuck Batman-“

His breaks almost teared out every layer in his ear drums, and his head almost hit the cement, when another tube flashed just inches away from the front of his bike. He drifted away just in time.

“We need your help.”

“What’s going on at the tower?”

He drove into an alley, wheelied up a wooden ramp until he was on top of a dumpster, then he sped right across the other side. The car started to slow down.

“Pirates. Trying to take over the Watchtower.”

“ _Pirates?!”_

Another alley to cut his route short. They saw him, sped off, then one of the passengers pointed an AK at him and started firing at the roads.

“Listen, Victor. All that space stuff? That’s your area. I don’t work with that-“

“No. You listen. You don’t know how pissed Batman is right now, and I don’t wanna get yelled at.”

“Trust me. You’ll get used to it. He’s not actually that scary.”

“Is he!?”

He could hear, just a little bit, what went on the other side of the line. There was screaming, some from people he could point out, some he wasn’t even sure was human at all. There were slabs of metal being thrown around, a light explosion at only such a distance away, and gun shots from firearms he’s never heard of, at least not on Earth.

“Jason, just please-“

“I’m not interested. Boom tube someone else.”

He turned off his comms, on every line there was, and turned to a left alley.

People had left the streets, thankfully, but some cars were still around, parked to the sidewalk and some stuck waiting for a traffic light the runaway just ignored, which meant he had to as well.

They saw him behind them, and before they could step on the gas, Jason pulled out his own gun, lined with bullets more explosive than a small bomb, one Bruce would absolutely mutilate him for, and shot it at the tires.

It hit the left one at the back, and the car started spinning fast. He could hear screaming, not so much from the pedestrians as he did from the four runaways in the car, and it uncontrollably screeched into the now empty roads, and it seemed to be only gaining speed.

Two cars at the right. One short enough for him to climb onto the other twice its size.

He only had so much time.

Jason wheelied up and broke the roof of the first car, sped on and used it to ramp him up to the second one. He pulled on the throttle, the dust from the wheels piling up in his boots. In a moment shorter than a second to count, Jason soared into the air, right where the car would skid into.

He’d have landed on its roof, stopped the driver from stepping on the gas before it’d hit anyone dumb enough to cross the street at this time which he knew someone inevitably would. That was his plan.

He didn’t think a boom tube would suddenly appear, right where he’d have landed, when he was flying in the air where he had no chance of swerving away.

Then, it was black.

_Fuck._

That blackness was enough to make him realize what went on, not long enough to decide what he’s going to do to the rest of them when he gets there.

Everything flashed too bright for him to see at an instant like a lamp was being shone right to his face when he’d just been stuck in a cave for three months. And it’d only been so long. But everything was loud, in both sight and hearing, and when he opened his eyes, he was running straight into a wall.

Jason flipped off of his bike before it crashed into an empty wall and exploded too near to his face. His arms weren’t going to thank him for the bruises he got from rolling to his side, shielding his face from the debris.

But he didn’t have time for that either. Everything, at the start, was this blur too messy for him to know what went on. There was the screaming he’d heard from the comms, the blasting of firearms he’s never seen on earth before.

His body should have been too heavy for him to even stand, but he forced himself up, and he did a terrible job easing his head still adjusting to the light when everything in him ached like he’d just stepped out of a bad massage.

“Hood!” he heard someone scream. Cyborg. “Thank god, you're here!”

“Where the hell am I?!”

To his side, against a window he hadn’t looked into too closely, someone with the arms and legs of a human, but a head that resembled more of a warthog’s was thrown flat against the glass, hard enough that it screamed this deathly shriek only an actual pig would have made. Only he wasn’t one.

Everything started to clear up. Jason took off his helmet, breathed, then he walked to the unconscious body.

He had tusks, stocky arms, legs as short as his whole head, and eyes white and rolled over to the back. He wasn’t dead. He could _see_ it breathe from how large his rib cage was protruding out his chest.

Then there was its head. Or what was left of it.

His jaw wasn’t like the rest of his face. It was made of steel. _A cybernetic jaw?_

And his teeth were as well. The ones that shot out of his mouth. Silver and looked as if they’d withstand even the harshest blows.

Then he looked out the window.

Thankfully, no one else was around to hear him cuss out the worst ever known to man.

He never thought he’d see Earth from _here_ , where it was small enough that if anyone were around, the whole planet would be the same size as their head.

“Fuck!” he pulled his helmet back on. “I told you I wanted nothing to do with this!”

Cyborg was still with his boom tubes, just with his one hand, while the other fought off the attackers.

“You're here now. Make the most of it.”

Even more of the team started showing up from his portals. Beast Boy. Spoiler. Superboy. Starfire. Unlike him, they sprung into action the minute they could, blasting their beams, their weapons, their fists, and with Gar’s case, a shriek from an eagle’s cry.

Jason pulled out his gun and started firing aimlessly at the intruders too drastically bizarre to be human.

“A little synopsis on the situation might help!”

Cyborg fired from his arm.

“I told you. Pirates!”

“ _Space pirates!?”_

“They call themselves _The Fleet._ They’re known all over space-“

“ _Well, ain’t this a treat_!”

One that looked enough like a human but with paper white skin and eyes looking more like black holes than they were irises fired at Jason, with a gun that fired beams, lasers most probably as they glowed red, and zapped off a part of his leather jacket before it hit the wall.

His guns were too primitive at that point, but he kept on and fired at its shins.

It fell to the floor and its leg shriveled into ash, and his ears wouldn’t sit through this night if it meant hearing these kinds of horrific screams for the whole of it. He got up, slammed his boot onto its rib cage, and aimed his gun at its head.

“ _HOOD-“_

“Oh _, come on!_ They’re fucking robots!”

“ _THEY’RE CYBORGS. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE.”_

He kept quiet before he would have said it wouldn’t have mattered to him like they were as different as a black ant was to a red one.

“Don’t kill them! Batman’s orders!”

“Batman’s bitches,” he snorted.

“ _What_?!”

He slammed the butt of his pistol against its head, and it laid unconscious with his eyes sticking up to the ceiling. It didn’t even have eyelids to close it with. He kicked it away in disgust, ran past the debris out into the tower’s main lobby.

 _Everyone_ was there. Wonder Woman being tied by her own lasso and Superman having at it with another alien with skin as rough as a tree trunk’s bark, but with half its face mangled and replaced with a red glowing eye and a Terminator-like finish on its mouth and jaw.

Then there was Roy Harper. The son of a bitch. He was there, on the ground and fighting off a blade that struggled to pierce through his neck by a brown bear with horns. Jason shot at its arms, then it roared and tumbled off just as Roy kicked it in the snout.

“Jason!”

“Good to see you.” he shot the bear in the leg. “How the hell did this _fleet_ get in here?!”

“They bombed one side. They got ships surrounding us like vultures.” He pointed out the window. The kind of ships that waited for them, hovering over their heads and out their windows as they blasted its sides were the kind he wouldn’t want to look at long enough to realize what they actually were, or else he’d be stuck there too stiff to move out of the way before they’d blast him until he was nothing more than shreds of light.

Jason stood at Roy’s back as he fired arrows and him with his bullets. “Are you sure these guys aren’t robots!?”

“Pretty sure they’re still alive. Or at least half alive.”

“Different races from across the galaxy?”

“Looks like it.”

“I was kidding.”

Jason shot through a metal arm that exploded at the bullet’s impact, throwing the purple-skinned alien with a trunk for a nose against the window.

“What the hell do these guys want from the Watchtower?!”

“My guess-” Roy shot three arrows at the same time. “Information on the League, or kidnap one of them for ransom. Or bounty.”

“Thought these guys were pirates?!”

“Doesn’t mean they won't do anything else for galactic credits.”

 _Galactic credits_ his ass.

Jason reloaded his guns, which honestly weren’t going to be much help going after laser guns and the kind of technology they’d dream to have in a thousand years. He was left with a Glock.

_Oh, did he not want to be here at all._

“Roy!”

He shot a flying drone that went for his red hair, and Arsenal turned around just before another would have pierced a glass shard against Jason’s back.

“Jason, they took out Kori!”

“Fuck these toaster ovens-“

At first, he thought someone just sneezed on him.

A bad, horribly infected sneeze. One that let out enough mucus that would have stuck to the ceiling if balled up and thrown by a hand.

Because it sure felt that way, with how, with everything moving too fast and too chaotic for him to see, a blob of green, half-solid slime, large enough to drown him in its bile, suddenly gets shot in his direction.

_This can’t be mucus. It was too much to come from anyone’s nose._

That’s what he told himself when at the end of that split second, his body was stuck to the wall and the blob had stiffened enough that he couldn’t even move his fingers. All that showed was his head, peaking out over the bile, which smelled just as horrible as a year-old sewer untouched.

Then, he saw the attacker.

And he might have thrown up a little bit in his mouth. Worse, he did, and he just swallowed his vomit before it even went up past his throat.

It was an alien with the head that resembled an ant eater’s, but with its snout almost thrice the size of its head. And his nose, pouring with disgusting green mucus as solid as it were a tongue, it wailed about like it was an arm.

He was a cyborg from the waist down. The rest of his organic body was intact. _Great. So these guys aren’t androids after all._

It laughed at Jason just before he was jumped against and forced to the ground by Raven’s beams. Its laugh was just as horrible as its smell. And at that, he did throw up.

“ _JESUS, FUCK. SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF HERE!”_

He struggled for his guns, but they were inches away from his most outstretched finger at his side, which he couldn’t even flinch. It was solid by now. Absorbed into his skin. _He might throw up again._

Jason shook his whole body, screamed for help.

Then, all the way over at the corner, he saw Damian.

He would have held up okay if not for his shoulder. Dislocated, as it seemed. He kept his one arm stuck to his side while the other held onto his one sword. He was covered in his own blood, his knee pads in shreds, and his head about to fall to the ground lugging it around like it were so heavy.

His attacker’s boot crushed his chest, and the boy was sent flying to a wall. He didn’t, couldn’t, pick himself up after that.

“Robin!” Jason cried out. “This fucking _SNOT-“_

“I got you!”

Roy shot three arrows at the hardened mucus, ran all the way to the other side before Jason could even speak up.

The three arrow heads stuck to him, and in two seconds exactly, they detonated.

Being drowned in a blob of mucus was one thing, but almost tasting it in his mouth when he almost died being blown against it was another. Everyone around him was covered in snot, and he fell.

Damian was still down.

His attacker was coming after him, two blades in its hands. It walked slowly as if to taunt him, to kill. Jason ran faster than his bike would have sped into it.

Then he grabbed one of the drones, an alien that could hover under its feet, then Jason threw it against the assailant’s head just before it swung its swords at Damian.

He was strong enough to send it flying, back hitting the glass. As it lied unconscious on the ground for that little while, and Jason took it to rush to Damian.

“Come on,” he took Robin’s arm, slung it over his shoulder. “Get to safety.”

“I have to fight.”

“You can’t fight like this.”

He hauled the kid to a corner, set a table nearby to hide him away from the scene. The minute his head met the wall he closed his eyes.

Jason shouldn’t have left him alone, or just let him drift off to sleep not knowing if he’d wake up.

But that same cyborg, the one with blades sharp enough to hiss through the air at just a flinch, picked itself up, and it was bleeding.

 _She_ was bleeding. A busted lip. Her blood was blue, and she wiped it off her lip with her cybernetic hand.

He could see her gritting teeth, and the growl out of her was no different from a lioness’s. She had the form of an earthling; arms, legs, head, and body no different than it was from a female human, except all her limbs were of steel, her one eye glowing like a bulb of light. He couldn’t point out which parts of her were still skin.

Yet, she bled. Which meant she still had the organic senses to feel the utter annoyance that completely showed off with how she ran to him like a bolt.

Jason rolled himself over to the side, the only thing he could do at that moment he was too stiff to even think, then it was her blades that flashed in front of his neck that if any closer, would have cleanly sliced off his skin.

He ran, though that would have been stupid knowing she was, with just about every limb she had, much faster.

He shot aimlessly and one bullet just bounced off her arm. _Fuck._

Jason threw his empty guns away, hauled himself up the many debris on the floor, and his weight against the soles on his feet enough to push him to gain leverage, he grabbed one of the cyborg’s laser guns and shot it right at her.

It hit her in the gut, but it wasn’t enough to throw her off.

“I could use one of these,” he eyed his new sliver gun as big as his whole arm.

She growled again, like it was the only sounds she knew how to make, and she pounced for him just before he flipped off one of the surfaces.

“ _Oh my goodness gracious! I’ve been bamboo_ -“

All she grabbed onto was his ankle, and she’d spun him over to a pillar that shouldn’t have been designed to stand in the middle of the floor like it did. She was strong. Stronger than he was. Something was bleeding, somewhere he couldn’t tell. And something was _definitely_ broken.

And he flew across the _whole lobby_ , which was enough to be the size of a small field.

 _Oh,_ she wasn’t about to let him go. Damian was nearby. Which meant his sword was, too.

Just as she charged for Jason a whiff suddenly blew her off her momentum. Fast enough to stop, just inches away from being pierced by a red arrow, she turned to Roy aiming at her from above a mezzanine.

The cyborg watched him stand like she was hell-bent on breaking his remaining bones.

Roy shot another arrow. And another.

They would have been enough to pierce through the spaces between the steel slabs on her limbs, but she was quick to move. She ran up to Roy, breaking everything she stepped on.

An arrow was too slow, and it was enough for her to grab it just as it flew.

Then she spun, used its speed that still hadn't left its head, then she deflected it off like a light beam against a mirror, throwing it at Roy.

He skidded off to his side before the arrowhead would have pierced his skull.

And that second of a distraction was all he needed. Jason otherwise never would have hoped to successfully sneak up behind her.

Then it was the shrill screams of their swords, one from her blades and the other Jason had pulled out of Damian’s hip, was a hiss that would have pierced through bone. She was strong, and no way is he going to hold her back for too long. His hands were shaking but he forced it to hold, sword almost down to his chest with her might pushing it hard.

Her eyes were so dark, darker than any emptiness of a sinkhole he’d look into, so devoid of a soul, of life. From that look, and that look alone, he could tell she was one to never break from looking into one’s shaking eyes as she drives any of her blades, or a bullet perhaps, right to their necks.

She looked at Jason like it was just that. Like she wanted it to be the last he’ll ever see before she cuts his chest.

Then a laser beam hit her back, just between the steel slabs where her spine would have been. _How many times did his ass have to be saved today?_

Jason pushed her with a blow to her stomach, finally throwing her off, but it didn’t take much before she stood back on her feet, stretched her neck. No blood out of her. _Shit._

“Be careful!” Cyborg cried out from afar.

“Thanks, Vic!”

She pulled out one of her swords, then he wished he listened to Damian that one time he wanted to spar with Jason to a sword fight in the manor.

If his arms weren’t already so worn out, it wouldn’t be half as much trouble as it was. That’s what he convinced himself, though, even when it probably wasn’t true. Every time Jason could even lift his sword, as heavy as it was even when a twelve-year-old wielded it, the cyborg would throw him off with a slice of her lighter blades, let it hiss long enough to shred his ears for the nth time that day, and she’d spin and do it again before he could stand.

“ _What the hell are you_!?”

A wordless mutter out of her, pushing him off her with her hands and her one foot against his stomach, then he could see, probably a sight he won't forget in a long while, how the side of the blade was as sharp and thin as it was, close enough to his helmet that if his strength falters for even a second, the blade would pierce right into his nose. 

If his head couldn’t stretch to the side to the extent that it did, he’d be dead by then.

Jason pushed her off, hitting the side of her arm with a blade.

Then by some miraculous prayer he couldn’t remember he made himself, he continued to strike his sword until the blade would have cursed at him for wrecking its sides. Back and forth, with their blades screeching at every hit. The cyborg wouldn’t stop, even when it obviously started to hurt. He wouldn’t either. Not until this psychopath was dead.

More beams around him, firing at the incoming reinforcements that would have climbed in and helped her against him. “I got you covered!” he heard Cyborg scream, just as he blew off a hovering bee creature as large as a head that was just about to sting him in the ass. He had to fight through the beams as well, swerve about before they’d hit his skin, and that was hard to do having to wield such a sword and go up against a cyborg who clearly had worse anger issues than he did.

Then.

_Then._

It was the most horrific thing he’s ever heard, more horrible than even silence so deathly.

Victor’s screams were not ones he heard so often. He heard it once, back to his days as a Titan. When Victor Stone had been consumed by the Mother Box. The labs had footage of the incident, and the team had to watch it before they’d go on with their investigation.

This. This was no different.

He turned them both around, just so he’d see what went on. On her face was a sinister glare on her face he wanted to break so badly.

One of the pirates, a cyborg of green skin and a face so ghostly stern, blank white eyes, and a hand of steel that had morphed into a large blade, had Victor in his hands.

And his blade, large enough to have cut a tree, pierced through Vic’s chest like the Mother Box wasn’t anything to his kind.

And his kind was something he was familiar with. He’s seen a couple of them on earth.

_A Martian._

Then the blade, one that’d shot out of Cyborg, shifted into an arm, then there were wires and steel slabs. It morphed into his chest, then he stopped screaming.

 _“NO!_ ” he heard voices screech.

His eyes that stared to the terrifying abyss of space from out the window flashed into this blinding white, his body inanimate, his four limbs as still as they were dead. But he wasn’t. The Martian that held him had the same eyes on him.

Then his two arms shot up. The fucking Martian was controlling him like a puppet.

From his arms that turned to weapons, beams shot out of his fist, repeatedly at every direction there was, and those beams stuck to the walls as boom tubes so distorted there was no telling where they’d lead into.

Portals. Open everywhere.

He saw Superman throw off one of the flying drones off his back and it fell right into one of them. It didn’t come flying back.

“Holy shi-“

A punch to his helmet. It wasn’t any friendlier if it were a sword, like a bullet the size of a small chair was thrown to his face, and he fell flat against the wall, rolled over like his skin wasn’t already about to bruise like a banana a few hours from then. 

His helmet didn’t break, _thank fuck._ But only because he had one of his good ones.

He stood, already so difficult to even do, and Jason stretched out his neck as he looked up, against a blinding light behind shooting out of Victor’s arm, the woman that was walking towards him now with a gun she picked up from her hip.

“You humans are pathetic-“

“ _Oh, so she does speak!”_

Her voice was low and taunting, terrifying enough to make him physically back off even when he had no plans to cower.

But he realized what made it so hard to stand was not because he was too bruised up to move.

A shard of glass made it past his armor, right to his bottom hip. It was shallow but bleeding. He took it out of his flesh and immediately knew he shouldn’t have.

And the stars looked so much closer from where he sat, as he hauled himself up to lay against the glass. Enough to breathe, to close his eyes and look up. At the murderous cyborg about to drive a knife down his clavicle.

More boom tubes started flashing out of nowhere. At his side. A few yards away from his feet.

“Whatever you do,” he heard someone cry out. It sounded like Dick. “Don’t go into the portals!”

She took her time towards him, her blades shrieking, then she eyed him like prey. And he was.

Three arrows. One to her back. The other two right at her feet.

It exploded at the impact, and for the last time, her glare more murderous than any killer he’s ever seen, she was thrown off her feet and went flying into the debris.

Jason tried, with a hand to stop the bleeding, to push himself up and grab the sword that had flung too far for his reach. Roy went after him, pulling at his hand.

“Jason, you have to stand up!”

But the cyborg was too fast, had already healed.

She grabbed her one sword by the blade, and her eye glowed red.

Her knife was flung expertly like the winds were to her will, her power to swerve it to wherever she pleased.

And it struck Roy at his knee, deep enough to hit his bone.

His screams hurt Jason more than his own would have deafened him. And he had to watch, still with his rib bleeding onto the floor, when Roy crawled on the ground reaching for his fallen bow, but the cyborg had run up to him, drove another blade down his thigh, and pulled it out purposely letting the ridges slice off his flesh.

So much of what he saw, as clear as it were, even the voices that echoed he was sure to haunt him for as long as he’d remember, he couldn’t move to do anything about.

Roy’s screams at the cruel cyborg had not much care for his bleeding legs, and the asshole had it in him to push himself to charge.

All it took was a kick with her boot, and Roy was flung over to the back.

But it wasn’t to a wall.

A boom tube opened, as if she’d summoned it herself, and his friend’s limp body fell into that dark hole a second too late for him to reach for his outstretched hand.

“ _ROY!”_ He screamed. “ _NO!!!”_

Every part of him, engulfed in the sudden burst, a flame once just from a wick now torched into this inferno, it was that very charge he needed to ignore his spilling blood, how every muscle ached and his breaths too dangerously slow. Jason picked himself up, took his hand off his rib to ignore the blood, and leapt.

He had her on the floor, face down as for once, he caught her off guard. Jason pulled her arm and twisted it the wrong way, even with it of steel, he could feel it hurt. She struggled off him but he pushed all his weight on her, and her muffled screams echoed with her face stuffed to the floor with his force.

Then that very arm he twisted, it stiffened and swung over his face, grabbed onto his neck. Being choked with a hand made of steel definitely wasn’t something he was into, when after just a second of that he could see bright little spots forming over his irises.

She rolled them over, pinned him underneath her. Her screams. They sounded human. But almost everything about her wasn’t, not with how she looked at him. Without a remnant of a soul. Humanity disintegrated like smoldering ash. The eyes of a killer and one who will not hesitate.

His fist against her face didn’t hurt as much as he thought, avoiding the steel at all cost.

 _Her_ fist, however, was the equivalent of a metal rod with the weight of a small child being swung against his face, which, even with his helmet on, almost tore out his jaw. His helmet’s optics glowed red, alerting him of an emergency. _As if it were any help._

She just kept hitting him, didn’t falter, nor weaken, nor relieve herself from the tight grit of her teeth.

Then she stood up and kicked him in the stomach.

Spitting out his blood inside his helmet wasn’t much of a good idea, but neither would be taking it off.

“You…” she said, and her voice the same as the silent croak of a raven’s howl. “You’re easy to break…”

“I m-might just surprise you.”

Her boot was _made_ for rearranging innards, and his body was welcoming it openly at that point with him not even trying to resist the pain from her hits.

Jason rolled over the floor again. Another kick, and he’d hit the wall. She’d corner him. Drive that knife down his chest.

She was sinister and slow to move, reveling in the pain, at how pale he’d become, and the blood all over that’d spilled on her suit.

Then there was light. Against her face.

He could see her eyes, looking down on him like he was but a pest, stuck to the bottom of her soles. The parts of her that reflected the light, and the rest that absorbed it.

_Which meant-_

Once more, she swung her foot, aiming for his head.

And Jason used whatever bit of might he had left, grabbed onto her ankle, and twisted it.

He threw her whole body over him, and even with her weight with it not at all like handling a human, his foot kicked up her stomach, threw her over to the other side.

Right into the boom tube that opened behind him, that he had no idea where it led to. Her last screams, screams of bloody murder from which he was sure, if she’d ever find him again, slicing off his neck would be too much of mercy not to make him suffer.

Then the weight, the pain, even the bleeding, they all stopped. He slumped to the floor just feet away from the portal and breathed out the aches on every muscle he had.

She was gone. The hole she fell into. It was too dark to even tell where it went.

 _Just an ordinary day,_ it was.

A few minutes before he stood up, he tore out a piece of his shirt to hold it up against his side, where the blood was spilled.

“Hey,” someone called. “You okay?”

It was Roy. _Roy._ Thank fuck. He was okay. Beaten up and looked like absolute horse shit. But okay.

“Jesus.” He pulled his friend to his chest. “ _Christ_ , I thought you were dead.”

“The boom tubes brought me back,” he said. “You took care of her?”

“Where…” Jason looked about, at the chaos that ensued. “Where’s Victor? Roy, they took Victor.”

“Victor?”

“Cyborg…” That relief, that flush that drove off the pain, it wasn’t enough. Everything still felt like it weighed down his arms. “Where is he?”

“The Mother Box?”

Roy was beaten up, scars all over his arms and face. His lip was busted, and every part of him was bruised and was covered in his blood.

But his grip on Jason’s arm. It was firm. Strong. He felt unbothered, looked at him straight in the eye.

“What did you just call him?”

“Where is the Batman? Can you take me to him?”

“The _what?!_ ”

Then his friend’s distraught face, the one that looked as if he climbed himself out of a battlefield barely with all his limbs intact, morphed into a smile so ghostly, and the way his lips curved up were not, in just about any humane way, _possible._

“Shit-“

Roy’s arm shed of his light skin, and his hair shifted into this bald, steel slab. _Green_ stared back at him.

“You’re of no use.”

The _Martian_ , the cyborg that led _The Fleet_ , his devious smile was the last thing Jason saw before his steel hand pushed him into the boom tube.

Cyborg once told him, that the farther the portals took, the longer it was he’d have to run through a wormhole. This dark passage, sometimes as black as an abyss, sometimes with enough light to be a train tunnel that lasted longer than a minute. Sometimes it lit up in all different colors and neon signs with no definite shape flashed before you.

A trip from one end of the earth to the other took about half a second to pass through.

One from Gotham to the Watchtower, the one he’d just went through, lasted a good two seconds.

This one.

This one lasted longer than when he had to jump from a helicopter ten thousand feet above sea level.

He was falling, not walking, and there were lights, flashes of it in all kinds. Walls of that very light. There were images. Voices. Faces he’s seen before. Being’s he’s never come to imagine. Creatures from around earth and some he thought never to have existed. Then there were glows, much like the auroras of Iceland, that danced and lasted even as he fell thousands of feet a minute.

Everything was this blur he still could see past, and the winds against his body, the ones that resisted enough of his fall, it was pushing against his muscles like it wanted him to halt, and it was just as painful as a lingering burn of a hot, metal bed, being pressed against his front like a large brand.

The lights were nothing to marvel over, even as they were beautiful. He kept falling, and it was enough for a thought to come up. And he knew he was terrified beyond what he’d ever expect to see.

Then, _fuck all else that inhabit the universe_. The most wicked alien cyborg in all the stars hadn't finished her trip down this wormhole either, it seems. 

_She_ was still falling, and she did not look happy at all how he’d just hauled her into that same hellhole karma pushed him into as well. Jason caught up to her, as much as he tried to resist, but he was being pulled down faster, enough to reach her outstretched limbs.

And when she saw him, he saw death right into its spectacles.

“Shit-“

She screamed something unholy and foreign, started clawing after his jacket as if they were ever getting out of this alive enough for her to kill him herself, which he hoped won't be the case, as falling to his death seemed the more desirable option than to die by this woman’s nails.

She kept after him, grabbed him by the collar, and landed a good one to his face. He slammed her foot against her hip and even more so did her face convince him that _every minute she was alive was another nail to his coffin._ She swung about, completely ignored the fact that they were _still_ falling, and he punched back only to keep her still. Which she didn’t. At all.

The lights started to blur, darken, and fade. Then there were flashes of white. Then it was dark. Too dark for him to see. Then it was so bright it hurt to even move his eyeballs.

Then that vigorous flashing halted into the vastness of a bright orange sky, and just as those lights stopped, so did gravity.

The other end of the boom tube faced _sideways,_ which meant he flew out of the wormhole parallel to the ground. Jason was thrown yards away from wherever he came from, then his shoulder hit the sand, _sand_ , and he was spinning like a dough roller on a wooden plank. Over the ground, cushioned by nothing but the pads under his jacket, the sprinkle of salt all over the gashes on his flesh. He rolled for a good minute, only stopped with the ground hindering his speed, and even more so did it hurt when his back hit a slab of stone so close to hit his head.

Then he was flat, on the scorching, orange sand that stung his skin, finally stopped himself from moving for once when it seemed as if he were falling and spinning for the last ten minutes. And that was definitely not one he wanted to go through again.

His breaths were at a pace no human should have ever been capable of, not even to how his lungs were supposed to work. If he still had lungs at all. But his eyes, as much as it hurt to see, they were kept open. And there were no clouds, no stars. The sky was this orange so bright yet dark enough for it to almost be night. And to the horizon he could see, from the sides of his eyes, there was nothing more than sand for miles outstretched.

His head, slowly to not crack his neck at the force, he held it up to further see.

Like a desert in the Middle East. Or in Africa. Egypt, perhaps. Fuck those boom tubes. _Fuck portals._

Jason threw his head back onto the ground, even when it hurt, and screamed.

But it wasn’t _his_ screams he heard back.

Steel hands grabbed onto his neck, and on him a weight he shouldn’t have had to withstand.

 _She_ was still here, not as beaten and worn out like him, but the sheer amount of aggravation that reflected off her dark eyes screamed at him to not even resist his death anymore if he didn’t want it to be so painful. Her cold, metal fingers dug into his neck, her screams deafened him even further. She was on top of him, restricting all movement, and it seemed she wasn’t interested in beating him up in any other way possible than to see his life be stripped from his body as she tears out every last breath out of him.

“A-are… you… kidding… me…” he gasped. He held onto her hands.

“ _I’m gonna kill you_ …” she said, her voice deep and course. “ _And it’ll be slow. And painful_.”

He managed to pry her fingers just enough for him to catch a whiff of breath. “Yeah… got that the first time you stuck your foot up my throat.”

“You talk too much-“

His fist to her mouth, where he knew wasn’t made of steel.

She was weakened. Enough to make her fall off. And he shifted his body to hold her hands down, away from any flesh of him exposed.

If she were any stronger he’d be dead by now.

“ _LET GO OF ME!_ ”

“Stop resisting and I won't _have_ to kill you-“

“You think you're gonna kill me!?”

“I told you I’d surprise you.”

A foot _way down_ his groin, at regions that made him see white, then she pushed him off her again, fist to his face and the other hand gripping his neck.

At a lonely desert that stretched for miles, the eerie silence, disturbed only by his groans of pain he’d never admit and her deathly screams of torture. At least, when he dies, no one would have to see him and feel bad.

Jason held her fist, and it shook, hurting his wrist, but it was either that or she breaks down his helmet. That resistance was all he had, that last string of life. He was beat. And the pain that came with the blows, it was his muscles giving out to the exhaustion. And it was a pain to even see light. When all he wished, or his body wished, to see was peaceful darkness.

Which led his eyes to drift off to the sky. To have that second of peace before her fist inevitably breaks down his ribs enough to puncture his lungs.

At least, he thought it was the sky.

Skies don’t have two circular orbs of white, a moon, or _two_ of them, twice the size of what it usually ought to be.

That was it. He was seeing two moons now. That was how you know your visions were off and your brain would make up an oasis to convince you that you were walking straight into heaven.

And those same visions led him to believe there was a planet with four rings, just further down the horizon. _Oh_ , was it beautiful. That was indeed heaven. The planet looked as magnificent as Saturn, except this one was a faded green, masked over by the fog. It was large enough that it covered half the horizon at the very end of the desert.

It lasted a minute.

Or a minute too long.

Something flew over their heads.

_Was that an engine?_

“Stop!”

She was, in just about every way he was as well, exhausted and beaten. Her face bled. Her lip might need stitches.

He pushed her arm off, took her by the shoulders, and hauled her to the ground, and she didn’t even resist falling to her back to look up at the sky.

“ _You_ …” she panted. “ _I hate you_ …”

“Shut up.”

Jason stood up, and what he held, the sands that fell through his fingers. They weren’t the kind he felt in deserts he’s been to nor the beaches near home.

He heard a noise. One he’s never heard before. It came from behind.

What it should have been was a desert fox, with large ears, black eyes, and a snout similar to a dog’s.

But its ears were nothing proportionate to its little head, and even more so did he think he was hit too many times to be creating images of a fox with only two legs, blue fur, and ears that flapped enough to be wings, hovering the creature past him.

Jason grabbed his hair. Looked up. The two moons were still there. And the lone planet from afar. _They should have been gone by now._

But he no longer was on the brink of death and _still,_ he could see them.

He turned around. To the side where the light came from.

And there were three sources of that light, at the other side of a large mountain. _Three suns._ One as yellow as the sand, one this deep orange, beautiful and dim, and the other, a red that looked more deadly than it would be possible. And they were all falling in different directions.

The last time he checked, Egypt had just about the same amount of suns and moons as the rest of the planet.

Which meant, of course, that there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation, as bizarre as it could be even with the boom tube he just came out of, that he was far, farther away than where he thought to have landed.

His grumpy companion had stood to her feet, and her face, as drained as she was, looked about with the same confusion as he had.

Something flew over their heads again. This time he could see, clearly, that it was no bird.

It was a ship that resembled nothing like an airplane, nor a jet, or just about any aircraft he’d seen.

And it soared further up in the air, leaving a bright blue trail of beams behind it, before it tore through the fabric of space and zapped out of the atmosphere, sending a small sandstorm behind it.

That was an alien space ship.

This was not the desert sands of the Sahara.

Not Dubai. Not Egypt. Nor anywhere he could tell.

A boom tube that lasted that long couldn’t have taken him anywhere _near_ earth at all.

This wasn’t Planet Earth.

This was somewhere far, _far_ away.

She limped to Jason’s side, looking at the three suns setting peacefully. It was a beautiful sight. And he would have marveled over it if his heart hadn't already dropped beneath his feet. She was silent. And tired.

But even as his body told him so, he didn’t feel like resting anytime soon.

His voice was the only one for miles.

_“Where the hell are we…”_


	2. Imia

Their instructions were clear. To bring the Alpha Target intact and stay clear of the Batman. If on sight, exterminate.

Captain Z’arr was reckless with the Mother Box. Racing for glory, even against his own crew, was both a death wish and a hallucinogen. Ora told her it was inevitable, with how the Martian ought to think. There was no holding him back. If she were a million miles away, what of the rest of the crew? How many of their men had been sucked into the boom tubes he was too stupid to conjure?

 _She_ wanted to deal with the Mother Box, and if she had, it would have been to none of her men’s expense. But it wasn’t. She was here, alone, with a liability that would soon be far worse than the death of her. Death would be mercy. This was infinitely worse.

One burning sun was enough of a pain when you’re stranded on a deserted planet, with nothing more than your deteriorating wit to rely on. Completely unreliable. 

But having _three_ suns blaring their scorching heat, no patch of exposed skin could possibly withstand that.

Thankfully, she didn’t have much. Nor was her mind organic enough to deteriorate at all. 

Her idiot of a companion, however, had all those and more. 

And if her weapon hadn't been destroyed by the fall, his neck would have spurted out half his blood supply after the first eight minutes of his constant whaling. This man, this _earthling_ , as useless as they could be, was taller than his kind’s average; stronger, more capable. Yet he seems to have the mind equivalent of a six-month-old- _what do the earthlings call them? The little demon incarnates with the mouths of a hacksaw?_

A Chihuahua. 

And her strength hadn’t fully restored, otherwise she would have choked every last breath out of him by then.

Their feet weighing over the sand adding a ton to its haul at every step they managed, it might as well have sucked them down to the core. The suns reigning over them, nothing to look on or head to, to at least give them the direction they need to keep going. But there wasn’t. It was them for miles, in a deserted planet not even she could recognize.

“How much farther?”

They marched. Behind her, the earthling had fashioned a shield over his head with his brown leather jacket. 

“I told you I don’t know.”

“You said you knew about this place-“

“I said it was far away from earth.”

“How would you know that?”

The sand took a liking to her feet, and the grains have embedded themselves to her limb through its tight metal shell. And the further she lugged her weight down the seemingly endless path, the heavier it was to drag along. 

So was the weight of her patience with this buffoon trailing her around.

“Can we _please_ take a break?”

“No.”

“I saw a comfortable looking rock ten minutes ago.”

“Another word out of you and I’ll snap your neck.”

“We’ve talked about this. Kill the other, die.”

“Because it’s a given you’d lose against me.”

Blaring, forceful, excruciatingly painful winds that with it brought the inherently brash gusts of sand against their skin, eyes, or anything exposed that at that point have scarred from the abrasions. She shielded her eyes with her arm. The earthling, his jacket.

“That is the third sandstorm since we got here.” He ignored her deathly stare. “How many hours has it been?”

She followed and tried _very_ hard to hold back that itch again before she dies. The time on her wrists did not ease her stresses physically nor mentally. “About twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?!”

He stopped, letting the sand eat up his heavy boots, and he did not look like he appreciated how she just walked and blatantly ignored him.

“How the hell has it even been twenty minutes?! The moon’s completed at least two turns by now!”

“You didn’t say _earth_ minutes,” she snorted.

“I always mean earth minutes.”

She raised her wrist pad and squinted at the fading lights under the cracked screen. “About five hours.”

“ _AaaaaaaaaaaaaaGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH_!”

Five cold fingers stuck to the firm muscles on his neck, of which its firmness was no match for her immense strength. The earthling stiffened, and this time she could see his eyes after he’d removed that stupid red helmet after the first two hours. He sweats a lot, and his hair was a convoluted mess. Earthlings do not do well with desert heat.

She tightened her hold, thankful that she wasn’t so unfortunate.

“Are you _trying_ to get us killed?”

“You a-are,” he squealed. “By trying to kill me.”

She pursed her lips. Before they left where they’d landed, this _boy_ took hours lecturing her why it was just as vital for _him_ to stay alive for _both_ of them to survive. To keep their sanities in check. Hallucinations. Mirages. The consequences of complete isolation in such circumstances. That was definitely not the case for her. At least, not until he convinced her. This man had a runny mouth.

She threw his whole body a few yards. The wails out of him brought her enough gratification.

“God, you’re a sadistic witch-“

“Kill you. Or let you kill both of us. I’ll take my chances.“

“You remind me of myself back in the day,” he coughed out a bit of blood. “Cynical. Irrational. Furious at just about everything that breathes.”

“Get up.”

“I’m trying but _you might have broken a fucking rib._ ”

“ _Get up._ ”

She ignored the broken rib and walked away from his limp body. Eventually, he followed, a hand easing a strain at the side of his stomach.

“Keep your mouth shut before you attract any wolves.”

“You have _wolves_ on this planet?!”

“There might be, and you’re made up of a lot more meat than I am, so guess who they’ll be going after.”

The earthling wouldn’t stop catching up to her, rushing when she walked too fast. He was tired, his legs were wobbly, and his heartbeat had slowed dramatically since they left the League’s Tower. Even more of his odorous sweat poured out his hairline, and his lips had gone pale. His black hair was so drenched he had to slick it over his head. _Funny._

“Me. Of course. But they won’t exactly ignore you, won’t they? I think the kinds of wolves they have here wouldn’t mind having steel for a side dish.”

“I swear,” she growled. “If you breathe one more word- _would you stop **following** me?!_”

“Where am I supposed to go?!”

“ _Just_ keep your distance.”

“Alright, alright.” He raised his hands to submit, then he slowed so she could walk a few yards ahead of him. “You take the lead.”

No thanks out of her.

A few more miles, still with not much changing from their diminishing line of sight but a large boulder that would appear every few minutes or so. There was no knowing what lies ahead if at all there was anything to know about. Sand had made a home in her eyelids, through the spaces of her metal plating at the joints. If she had any hair it wouldn’t have looked any better than Blue Eyes crawling to catch up. What had been left over with her skin had softened, burned to touch even with her fingers that were supposed to _reflect_ heat and not absorb it.

Six. Seven earth hours, the less it seemed that they find anything at all. What were they even looking for?

“Do you even know where we a-“

She didn’t even grab his neck, for the nth time that day. The look out of her, however, would have driven even the kindest furry animal out the woods and never come back, and immediately he shut his mouth.

Five minutes passed, she stopped. He stopped as well, with a considerable amount of distance between them.

Then she knelt. The earthling looked at him quizzically when she started running her cold hands against the sand.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

Driving the grains out of the way, it didn’t take long before her palm hit something solid. Metal. Cold and untouched. It made an unnerving sound being brushed against by her hands. She blew the sand off its surface and the earthling knelt beside her.

A circular land-mark. It bleared of age and was covered in years of dangerous brown rust. The engravings that circled its rim had faded over the many years against the sand. So had its color.

 _“Imia Refuse Station_. About 20 earth miles away _.”_

A rough translation into his language. “Imia?”

“That’s the planet we’re on.”

“Great.” His hands stuck to his hips. They were shaking. Another side effect from his exhaustion. “Now we know where we are so you can ask your little _cyborg friends_ to come pick us up.”

“We’re too far away for an immediate response. It’ll take time.” She hauled herself up. Even that had grown too heavy. “And I sent a distress signal hours ago.”

“ _Fantastic.”_

Her foot met his shins, and at that point, he’d just accepted his fate lying flat on the scorching hot sand. His jacket had fallen out of his head, and he looked even more of a mess deprived both the tools and the will to live.

“I don’t know _where_ this planet is,” she murmured. “But I know this refuse station probably has a usable ship.”

“Isn’t a refuse station just a _junkyard?_ ”

“You got a better plan?”

“No.” He propped himself up with an elbow. “But I am surprised at your willingness to escape this planet with me.”

“Who said you could come along?”

“Oh, come _on…”_

She headed to where the land mark pointed them to. Suddenly her feet in the sand didn’t weigh as heavy as ten pounds of rocks stuffed in a sack and her skin a bit cooler against the occasional blow of grain-infested winds.

The earthling kept with his distance. And when she thought it was but compliance to her threatening demands, at about an hour after they found the landmark, she heard a thud behind her.

Everything screamed at her not to bother looking back, but with it came the sound of his wilting heartbeat, dangerously low for his kind. And the blood flow had slowed as well. He sounded heavy, and that it hurt when he fell.

She looked behind her, and he was on the ground, flat with his large arms spread like a flying creature’s wings. He shut his eyes with it facing directly under the hot red sun, and his slow breathing would have been mistaken for a halt if not for her hearing.

She folded her arms, watching him catch his breath like a pest stuck to her soles. His chest rose and she could tell that took a lot of effort just to do.

“Please…” he said. “We need to rest…”

“You need to rest. I don’t need you to survive.”

“But I can… help with the odds…”

However, she did stay. Despite her sayings. She stood and waited for his breathing to be stable enough to stand, so his heartbeat wasn’t making his face as pale as the moon. If there were wolves she could feed him to them and leave before they could catch her.

“Oh god…” he sat up. Then his fingers fumbled into his jacket.

“What?”

“I can’t believe I forgot.”

Out of his pockets, he pulled out a snack bar melted beyond edibility. He didn’t seem to care.

“Sweet chocolate.” He gobbled up the first one and savored like a fine meal. “I knew I wouldn’t be back for dinner today.”

Her eye sockets were going to hurt at all the rolling she’d done that day.

And they stuck to the direction headed west, where the winds came from. It had faded from the orange flares out of the suns, but there was enough to make out a blurring figure of black. Wobbly, shaking much like a broken hologram. And it did look much like it. And it was coming straight for them.

 _Three_ of them. They were moving fast. And the closer they pushed themselves through the walls of a blur, the clearer she could see their robes and horses with horns, a jarred spike trap of a mouth, colored in deep orange with the hooves similar to a quick-moving panther’s legs.

She backed away. “Get up.”

“I’m not done with thi-“

“ _GET UP!”_

That was all she bothered to tell him before she ran and abandoned him lying on the ground. It didn’t take long before he realized he was looking at desert bandits rushing for whatever scraps they could find in their pockets. His two snack bars might be a find.

She wasn’t sure why the idea of bandits coming along hadn’t crossed her mind when she knew this was a refuse planet. _Maybe her head did start to deteriorate._

Suddenly, the earthling’s apparent exhaustion wasn’t as apparent anymore and his feet were quick to take him to her side. His heartbeat quickened. Blood rushed faster. She might have had a remark on that if she wasn’t running for her life as well. “Shit. Shit. Shit,” she heard him murmur.

“Your _whining_ must have set them off!”

“I didn’t even know this planet had _people!_ ”

Another sandstorm, blown by the dastardly forces of their horse’s hooves. If she hadn’t just spent eight- _nine?-_ hours in this stupid desert she’d know exactly what to do. But she did.

Nets. Shot out of a gun. They landed right at their calves and circled their ankles until they were tied immensely tight together, enough for them to barely inch their legs away. They fell to the hot sand and the hooves came closer. The sand that pushed up went to their eyes. Soon it was these stinging flashes of three tall men, faces covered in dark robes only revealing their eyes, and the animals they rode. Large. Fast. Their even darker irises were so black it wouldn’t reflect even a speck out of the many suns.

With her bare hands, she tore through the nets. Rope by rope. At her ankle, her fingers started to burn. But then she was free, and when the sprain on her foot had snapped back into place from the recent fall, she ran again. The earthling had a small knife, had cut through the ropes, and followed suit. But they’d lost distance and eventually, the horses caught up.

And they were smart, using the dust of the sand to blow it against their eyes even further.

They circled them like scavenging birds awaiting a corpse, a whirlwind burning through what little flesh she had exposed.

“ _Do you have a gun hidden in your arm somewhere_?!” he screamed.

“ _A what_!?”

A pair of heavy boots fell to the ground, she heard, and it was approaching them. One of the bandits unsheathed a cutlass, and it sounded sharp enough to cut steel.

She forced herself past the whirling dust, focused on the approaching figure. Silent. Quick with their every limb.

It swung its sword aiming at her face, and swiftly she held the sharp edge of the blade with just her palm. It caused a dent between her joints. At another hit, she dented her arm. The earthling fought off another of the bandits. The third one came for her. Probably thought she was the bigger threat. Their horses, however, continued to spin. Their tactic to blow enough dust into their eyes and throw them off.

She sprung to her toes, and her shin hit a leg somewhere she couldn’t see. But it caught one of them tumbling. It was enough for her to grab its wrists and kick its chest to disarm it.

With the cutlass, she turned and blocked off the other bandit’s sword.

The earthling wasn’t doing better. He backed up, almost too much that his back hit one of the horses’ hooves. Arching his back, dodging to the sides just to not get caught in the immensely sharp blade.

“ _YOU GOT A PLAN?!_ ”

One grabbed her into a headlock, seconds before she slammed her head against its jaw if it _was_ a jaw she’d hit. At every slice of their sword too nearly missing her shoulder, or a jab at her back she was too slow to dodge, she knew _something_ happened back at that bloody Watchtower invasion that messed up her wiring, something that’d stopped her healing as fast as she would have hoped.

Something hit her head. A club.

She turned with her cutlass and sliced off a bit of flesh, right at the bandit’s stomach. It warded him off enough to stand back. But the other one just took its place.

The earthling was coming her way.

He ducked at a swing of a sword, and his attacker’s blade landed right at his comrade’s neck. Red blood spurted out of his robes. And finally, it was the end of his silence. He screamed, blood curdling at his throat. He grabbed his neck to stop the spurting but he’d fallen to the ground and tainted the orange sand with the deep red.

She caught the earthling’s eye.

Fighting off the two and somehow _protecting_ the earthling as he led the way, she trailed his behind, her sword’s blade feeling more brittle at every hiss it made as if it were screaming in pain. She managed to hold it off, and despite the whirling sand tornado, the human caught one of the horses’ ropes tied to its mouth. As it whisked him from the ground, his hand grabbed her arm.

And he hoisted her in front of him. She was driving the horse. In her hands, she held the ropes. And past the forceful blows of a circling storm, she could see the mountain they headed for. West. “Go!”

The horse was reluctant, and it neighed at their presence. Thankfully, it didn’t wait long enough for them to get caught. They rode off into the desert they never thought they’d be so glad to see, the air now empty and clear. The two moons and three suns glistening, rejoicing at their new-found sight. She pulled on the ropes to go faster.

Even more hooves approaching. The two bandits were after them. And as the horses knew them better, they galloped faster.

They caught up to their side at a rolling roadblock, even with the animal floating on its feet. She leaned forward as if she were whispering to the horse to go faster, even when it hurt. Blue-eyed earthling caught the sword she’d stolen and hit the bandit’s incoming blade coming for her leg. Then the other at the side opposite.

A trail of dust tailed their feet, leaving marks of their endeavor. And even when her eyes never left forward, the sand on her boots, blown by the horse up to her knees. She felt it tickle, then it burned. They cannot keep this up. Not for long. She ducked just as a sword almost hit her head.

“Block them!”

“I’m trying!”

She kicked for the horse to go faster and it just neighed in response. Must not have liked her much.

The earthling fought off the bandit on the left, wielding his cutlass strong enough to disarm him. She felt him tap her shoulder and so close did she bite his arm off, work of reflexes, before he pointed at the sword-less bandit.

She steered nearer, and behind her, the earthling stood, balancing onto the horse’s oddly shaped saddle, and jumped.

Then he wrestled the bandit off the next horse. From behind, he grabbed him by the stomach. It looked greatly uncomfortable, but his foot unlatched the other’s hold on the saddle and shoved him off the animal. They couldn’t see much of his body as it rolled off into the sand.

That few seconds of a pause was all she needed.

On her right, she felt a sword coming for her. 

She swiftly shifted her weight to the side to grab the last bandit by the arm, then his bone felt fragile, brittle even when she twisted it twice what the body could have unnervingly handled. Then it was the shrieks of his agony when she hauled his whole body off the horse, heavy as the man was, then she threw him off the animal with one pull.

The horizon so far off, she could see despite the pain on her limbs, that two of the suns had fallen over the edge of the planet. From then, she could tell. This planet was not very large, and their days would last only so soon. So would their nights. And their nights, she anticipated, would not be as kind as those very days.

The last sun was about to set. The red one. The sun dripped of blood. Menacingly, it stared from the distance beyond, as if to taunt them that even with their horses or their will or _each other_ , there was no guarantee of survival. It glowed, but even then, it wasn’t as bright. It hurt their eyes but still, they could look on at the burning flares emanating from its core.

They lost about one mile from this _circumstance_ , which meant more time before they’d reach the refuse station headed west. A refuse station. She never thought that’d end up being their only hope. But it was.

They drove their two horses out into the deathly silence of the desert, as empty as the darkness of a black hole not a being could survive in. Then, she knew, they both knew, this was but the first of their many obstacles.

Just as the sun had set and the heat no longer so excruciating, she slowed her horse. The earthling did, as well.

“I don’t know about you, but I think more of those bandits are gonna come our _WAY-_ “

A fist up his stomach was far too kind to what she wanted to do to this man. If she had her blades, her _real_ blades and not these makeshift cutlasses made out of wolf bones, she’d have mutilated every part of his intestines and used it as a necklace to parade around, letting the people wonder what man had crossed her enough with such a heinous crime. The most heinous of all. He fell to his knees and grabbed hold of his ribs. She won’t be surprised if they were close to collapsing.

“What the _FUCK_ was that for!?”

She kicked his face. Just once more. Bring herself even more of that whisking feeling of listening to the screams of pain she’d extort.

“Jesus _CHRIST­-_ “

“ _Don’t **EVER** touch me again_.”

“I SAVED YOUR LIFE-“

“I saved myself.”

“ _YOU’RE FUCKING WELCOME!”_

Thirty seconds, then the sun would fall into the other side of the planet and bask them into an unknowing darkness. Twice the bandits. Probably wolves. She was not looking forward to that. _Definitely_ not looking forward to having to spend it with this moron.

Whatever he had in that snack bar gave him enough strength to pick himself up. No longer did she wait for him. She got back onto the horse, settled herself in for a long journey. She didn’t have to look back to know he was trailing behind. Keeping his distance, safe as she wanted. But he followed.

\-----

Physically, she could not shiver from the cold. Not much, at least. Or she hoped.

But she could feel it nonetheless. It probably wasn’t a blessing that she didn’t have much of an outlet. Thankfully, it was bearable. High tolerance for vast temperature changes was one of the many adaptations required of her. The earthling, however, didn’t look like he could do much of the same.

Their horses had little supply, and they weren’t too confident finding the bandits’ camp for more. But each animal had two pouches. It would be enough for the earthling to last a few more days, even more when she didn’t need much of the supplies at all.

Then with the shallow cave they found with enough bushes to make a bed out of its leaves, she found a rock to rest her head on.

She chose to ignore him, but it was to no choice having to witness his trying to make a camp. He tied the horses down and went over the pouches. “They have water,” he offered her. She just shrugged and turned the other way.

From there, even from afar, she could hear his throat hitch when he enjoyed drinking the dirt water too much for a man who’d just walked through a desert for less than an earth day. His sweat had gone. Some absorbed to his skin making it look plump and pale, and pale he was. She could _hear_ his teeth chatter when a cold rush blew into his face. His hair danced, with there no longer having enough sweat to pull it back. And with the robes he’d found from the back of the horses, the last of the supplies the horses had, he wrapped them tightly around his shoulders to conceal more of his bodily warmth.

The pouches had food. Nothing he’d seen before, it seems. And he didn’t look too excited to eat them. It looked like raw intestine. Turns out it wasn’t much of a delicacy for earthlings.

“What _is_ this?”

“That’s food,” she said.

It was bleeding in his hand, soft and squishy. He put it back into the pouch. “I’ll stick to my chocolate bars.”

“There won’t be enough of that.”

“You said the station was twenty miles _hours_ ago.”

“Might have been two hundred. I’m not much of a translator.”

He picked the other pouch and sniffed the rotting contents inside. More meat, it seems.

“Do _you_ want some of these?”

Was it selfless that she chose not to consume them when it wasn’t for his purpose any more than it was of her refusing to let him watch her _eat_? She surely wouldn’t care less if he starved.

“I don’t eat,” she told him.

He seemed to understand. “Suit yourself.”

He closed the pouches.

Then with the same bush he’d stripped of its leaves, he cut off the branches with what was left of the cutlass he’d used with the bandits. Firewood. Every bit of it, with his hand covered with the robe in case the stems were laced with poison, which they probably were. “You gonna help me?” “No.”

He took to the firewood, and walked to the other side of the large boulder they settled into.

And from such a distance, she watched. Watched _him._ He sorted the fire into a bundle on a dry patch of land. With two rocks, he created sparks that looked much like how the stars twinkled when you were far enough from them like you would be standing on soil and ground, and those flying sparks landed on the dry wood. After fanning with his clothes, they caught on fire.

Earthlings needed much heat, otherwise, he wouldn’t have covered himself with his many robes around his back and shoulders and held his hands up to the fire to warm his flesh. From his lips, she saw smoke. He rubbed his palms together and from there she could count the beats of how his heart steadied to the pace it was supposed to beat.

Earthlings were needy. Needed food, water, resources, consumed them with only such little interval in between. Couldn’t bear much heat nor much of the cold. Needy. Materials and supplies, carried behind their backs when they longed for a journey such as this when they should have both their arms free and ready for defense. But even that, they couldn’t do much. This man was one of the lucky ones. Capable. Strong. Strong- _er_ , at least.

But that only made him need even more food, more water. Maybe his strength helped with his survival, but it seemed what little they did have, it won’t be enough.

Then, he looked up. Suddenly she wished she wasn’t just watching him so closely. Arms on her folded knees, she kept to her rock, leaning her head against it which felt heavy to even lug around.

“Do you get cold?”

 _Just shut up,_ she wanted to scream at him, but the wolves would hear. His insolent offers were enough sound to startle one.

Her shaking her head was enough of a refusal, a safe one before she would have snapped. At that, she turned away to avoid more conversation. A mistake she wished she hadn’t made, however, was looking too obviously covering herself with her arms, even crouching her back over.

“You’re cold-“

“I’m not.”

The fire he’d made had grown larger, warmer. She could feel it against her back even when she’d sat far enough away. Scorching. Flames burning. Cackling in the cold wind, enjoying its contrast. The sands were firmer under her feet, but the rock felt greatly uncomfortable. That boulder was the only one for miles and its surface was even colder than the winds, and she forced herself up so none of her skin could touch it.

And that warmth from his fire, she definitely _did not_ need more of.

“ _Come_ ,” he said, and his voice was soft. “I won’t even look at you. I promise.”

“Just leave me alone.”

“You’ll die from the cold.”

She snorted. “I’m not like you.”

Thankfully, at that. But he just went on. “I can see you shivering.”

So she _does_ shiver. She stiffened herself, cursed if it were true. But her knees were bent to hone what little warmth they had. She just focused on them, on what heat she _could_ generate, which wasn’t much at all. She ignored that man’s nagging and promised herself the moment she gets out, she’ll find audio adjusters that’ll block out her ears to voices she didn’t want to listen to.

Something buzzed on her arm.

_Yes._

She laid her feet flat, tapped onto her wrist. Her communicators went off. Two messages.

_“LIEUTENANT M-812, THIS IS LIEUTENANT J-910. LIEUTENANT M-812. CODENAME N/N, THIS IS LIEUTENANT J-910. CODENAME ORA. WE HAVE RECEIVED YOUR COORDINATES. N/N, I SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU. I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD.”_

Ora. She got her message.

 _“N/N. GET OUT OF IMIA. WE’LL MEET YOU AT THE BELT. SENDING YOU COORDINATES._ ”

_“COPY,” she said. “SEE YOU AT THE BELT. THIS IS LIEUTENANT M-812.”_

Saying those words were like the first gasp of air after a minute underwater. The Belt shouldn’t be that far.

It took a while, of her just closing her eyes as she faced the night, the two moons and the ringed planet watching her take easy breaths. Then that silence she enjoyed didn’t last too long, as she’d expected.

“N/N, huh?”

She almost jumped out of the sand. The breaths she took no longer felt so easy to take.

“No.”

“It sounds like a human’s name.”

“Shut up.”

“Is that what they call you?”

“ _You don’t get to call me anything.”_

Earthling had fashioned a stick with one of the branches and stuck one of the raw meats from the bandit pouch on its end. Whatever it was, it looked disgusting.

The earthling laughed. His teeth looked easy to break when he smiled like that.

“I can’t just keep calling you a witch, now can I?”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m calling you N/N. I feel comfortable with that.”

 _“I don’t care_.”

 _“Come on…”_ He offered her a stick. “Lighten up.”

“I told you I don’t eat.”

“Do you have a stomach?”

“I will gut you with these leaves.”

“Jesus. Fine. I’ll stop.”

Cold. Uninviting. She covered herself not caring for what she might have looked from his angle crouched over and defenseless. To her right, she had the blade. Easily reachable when needed. Eyes shut tight; she froze solid just so she wouldn't shiver when another sandstorm blew over. The rock shielded his fire, but it didn’t shield her.

“Fire won’t last long,” she heard him. “Come on. Just stay alive. I won't judge you, I swear. And I won't call you N/N.”

Shielding her ears with her metal palms won't do much of a cover, even less so when his voice seemed to power through just about _everything._ Into her knees, her face felt uncomfortable. Chills. Winds. This was not what she was built for.

That fire sounded a lot more inviting and a lot more worth of her pride.

“It’s putting out-”

He stopped talking, swallowed when she stood to her feet.

She looked inherently more comfortable sitting across him by the fire. Her legs she’d crossed over reflected the fire’s orange light.

Fires weren’t something she sees so often, and only have used so many times. But it was warm. It helped with her chills. Whatever this man had conjured, it was warmer than most engines or heaters or gas stoves that worked with food.

A tiny sun, perhaps. A star balled up into something sizable enough to be brought up to their hands, to have their little star so near to them, drawing them in with their heat. The flares that danced to the winds, drawn to the same direction, like the auroras of lights that often littered the poles of many planets.

She found herself leaning in, drawn to the heart of the flame. It was brighter, a blinding yellow. Further in, where it grew hot, she dipped her hand into the flares.

“Don’t touch it-“

A hiss out of her. _Got it. Don’t touch it._

And he bit back his laugh when she shot him another murderous glower that no longer seemed to startle him so much.

“What does your fleet do?” he asked her. “You sound like the galactic federation.”

“We’re not,” she said. “And what do you know about The Fleet?”

“I know that you’re a group of pirates built to be machine-like cyborgs terrorizing the many galaxies across the universe. That you’re assholes to the Justice League.”

“The _League_ is not but the _earthlings’_ defense.” She sounded disgusted. “We’ve dealt with worse.”

“I won't argue,” he snorted. “Now tell me more.”

“No.”

“Just one thing,” he said. “What were you doing at the Watchtower?”

“That, I absolutely _will not_ disclose.”

“They wouldn’t know.”

“They will. Stop asking. I’m not telling you.”

She could see his hands turn from that white pale into this reddened burn, made even more obvious with his earthling skin. “Fair enough,” he shrugged. “What _will_ you tell me?”

To say her look on him was dirty would be to say her choking his neck countlessly that day hurt nothing more than a too-tight necklace.

“Talk to me about anything. It helps with the sanity thing.”

“If I do, will you be _quiet_ for the rest of the night?”

The earthling snickered again. This time, he didn’t show much of his glistening teeth that reflected off the light from the flame. All it was is his lips curving to the side, subtle. And his eyes bore the same expression. She just scowled back.

“Is your name really N/N?”

“No,” she bit her gums. “It’s a codename.”

“The Fleet gave it to you?”

“I chose it myself. Next question.”

“So what is your real name?”

“M-812.”

“ _That_ is a codename. N/N sounds more like a name. A nickname even where I’m from. It’s not unfamiliar.”

“That’s because you’re an earthling. The opposite is true to us.”

“You can’t expect me to call you by a _number_?”

“That’s what I’m called. M-812.”

“Is it your name?”

She scoffed. “It’s what I’m called.”

“It’s not a name. It’s a number. I’m calling you N/N.”

A day under three suns rendered even her too exhausted to argue with this imbecile. Her hands no longer so stiff, she kept to their purpose, to shield herself from the open.

“I’m Jason.”

She looked at the eyes so light, she could see the flames, and herself, reflecting against it.

And he kept with his promise. The earthling. _Jason_ or whatever. He was quiet for the rest of the night.

The fire went out and he fell asleep on the heaps of leaves he’d made into a cushion. If she needed sleep, she might have done the same. But she just needed rest.

\-----

Further along, it took them several more hours. Fewer complaints out of the earthling. The hours of sleep were enough to conceal his whines and wails. The food as well. He no longer looked as pale. The robes he used to cover his body were of use. Both from the cold and the heat.

They found the second land mark five earth miles away from the station. “Will they let us inside?” the earthling asked.

“Probably not. We look too much like bandits. Or at least you do.”

“Bandits?” His horse neighed as if it responded. “I look nothing like them.”

“They were human.”

Their faces were, at least. She didn’t see much of their body. Unmistakably, however, the earthling resembles them too much to go into a junkyard.

Or was that just her avoiding the discussion that she and her fleet were sought out by half the galaxies? Or that the bounty on her head could pay for a whole planet’s poverty issue?

The earthling didn’t question it, thankfully. “So what do we do?”

A refuse station could mean two things. One, that species of other planets, with ships and supplies of their own, would visit to dispose of their junk. Some of those ships may be guarded, the more likely outcome. Some, however, are unattended.

Two, that a refuse station could hold ships whole. Half of them were garbage, and could barely lift a foot off the ground. But some could work. With little tweaks she might easily find, having considerable knowledge in engineering, one of them could fly.

“Are you heading for this _Belt_ place and meet your friends?”

“They’re my crew. And yes, I will.”

He removed the robes from his head to let the air run through his scalp. “You know where Earth is, right?” he smiled. “Could you drop me off? Like a little pitstop.”

“No.”

“Come on,” he whined again. She should have killed him when he was asleep. It was stupid of him to sleep at all. Only someone so deluded would have trusted her with a sword nearby. “I can’t just go with you-“

“I won't,” she didn’t even hesitate to admit. “I could do a lot of things, like throw you out the window.”

“After everything we went through?” he scoffed.

“You say that as if we’re friends.”

“We don’t have to be. As long as we’re not trying to kill each other anymo-“

Overhead, a large ship the size of a house. It was silent. Smooth. It roared above them that if they were standing over the other the landing gear would have hit their scalp. And it came so suddenly, that at the strong whiff of air, they ducked and shielded their eyes from the oncoming sand.

The station was near.

“Come on.”

They raced their horses as if to bid farewell to the deserts and the storms, the winds unwelcome. Not long after, another would come along.

At the horizon, it faded clearer. The black they thought was a smidge in their eyes turned out to be the hangar’s gates. They were wide open, and in front of it was the runway where the black ship had landed. At its sides, six guards standing by with arms that would take out a bandit at such distance. The ship slowly drove into the gates, foreign cries out of the guards directed at the workers at the top onlooking.

No other way to get inside. The walls were too high and smooth to climb. And above them was a dome made of glass. Blocking off any intruders before they’d be screened, it seemed. For a refuse station, it looked too much like a military camp.

“When I say jump,” she said. “You hang on.”

“So are you gonna take me home?!” he screamed through the gallops.

The silence out of her indicated held back insults and threats, but without refusal, she saw the earthling amused at her annoyance.

“T’was a pleasure,” he said.

Behind them came another ship. Significantly smaller. Slower as well. And it made too much noise for its size. It will have to do.

Closer. Closer. It was shrieking like one of those unruly animals on the planet Zuron. They had claws and fangs that further heightened their pitch. Deathly to hear. They used those very screams to taunt. That same noise came from the ship. Taunting her. The horse’s gallops, the sand stuck to her skin. She was tired and wrought out but there was that spike, that push she needed to just jump.

The ship flew closer, didn’t pay any attention to them it seems. “Jump!”

Pushing the soles of their boots against the horses’ backs, they grabbed onto the ship’s underside, at the tubes and pipes, the metal slabs that hung low enough for their fingers to grab onto. She held onto the joints, the earthling onto the exhausts.

Then they flattened their bodies, held on as the gear touched the floor. No longer was it sand beneath them, just a few inches from dangerously scraping their backs, but something more solid. Like cement. They were on the runway.

The way the impact affected the ship made her think it was about to break in half or be obliterated into pieces when it landed too harshly. Almost did she lose her grip. More so for the earthling, with his size not being favorable. He was but three inches from touching the floor with his behind.

But it continued to drive, slower this time, into the gates. As much as the security inside the ship was for no fool, they didn’t look twice at the spaces anyone could have snuck into. She overheard them speak. Only one driver and no one else on board.

“This ship is garbage,” the earthling whispered. “They’re throwing this shit out.”

“You got a better plan?”

No. He didn’t. He was smart enough to keep his silence as they drove the ship into the hangar, parked just beside one of the many junk ships thrown out. Internally, she wanted to scream.

But there were no other ships. The large black one just left. And the ones around them had been stripped of their parts.

“Go.”

The guards had left, and they dropped themselves onto the hard ground. Heaps of trash, broken parts, and even cybernetic limbs dating the past century littered the place. And it smelled as if all these were to hide a mass grave of decaying flesh. As they walked out the ship, with not much of a choice, they awaited at the outside of a circular dilating door. One that looked much like an eye of an earthling. If it were blue, it would have looked like _this_ earthling.

The hatch twisted open, and smoke arose from its cargo bay from behind. Out came the driver, a stout creature with a mouth half the size of its head, brown fur, and a staff. It waddled out the back and into the junkyard house to collect its dues.

They snuck in, easily, then she found the lever to close the hatch. Welcomed by the lingering cool air from the ship’s coolers, so close did she fall to the floor, close her eyes. Thankfully she didn’t.

It was invasively small and will knowingly gnaw at her patience, but another ship was coming, and the gates flew open. Even with it so far, they had that window she needed to get out.

She pulled on the lever, and the coolers started up. The lights, the engines, the radar on the screen between them. “You take the wheel,” the earthling said. “I have no idea how to drive this thing.”

“Then you better shut it.”

Slowly, the ship maneuvered out its spot. Not many batted an eye. And the few that did notice, she saw speak into an intercom. _Hurry._

Into the runway, straight out the gates. She heard the guards puzzlingly scream at the ship, tapping its hull.

“Close the gates!”

The ship’s owner was frantic, rushing to grab hold of its gear. The guards who knew there wouldn’t be much time for the gates to close then stood in the way. With them being too tall to fly over, they couldn’t get out.

“What do we do?” the earthling asked. All she did was clench her jaw.

Hovering off the ground, their newfound decaying resort for hope instead headed _up,_ into the glass dome several yards above. Not even the blasters aiming for the cockpit startled her. If anything, it paced her.

“What are you doing-“

“I told you to be quiet.”

For a ship so small, it boasted a plasma chamber, with only so much fuel for a few blasts. But one should be enough. It had to. If anything, she _should_ be startled.

But as the craft hovered over the bunkers and the rotten landfill, she faced the cockpit up, and their bodies pulled to the backs of their seats. Guns hit their sides. Even more, and it might pierce through this ship’s not so reliable shell.

Blasting the dome at the very tip, the shards were thankfully shattered enough not to destroy the ship’s exterior. And she pulled on the gas, gathering the speed. She was out of there before another blast could have injured the hull.

The earthling looked over the windows, at the mountains of sand once their death sentence, now a marvel that seemed to amuse him. She heard him gasp, look over like a child. And he might as well be. There were flocks of the blue-furred foxes, scavenging for raw meat. There were more of the bandits, on their horses in a magnificent pack, gallops she could almost hear. The bright trails of dust they left behind a mark of their vast territory. And indeed, they looked almost identical to the earthling. Hair down their backs. Some with beards. Some without. Swords on their hips, and their horses with the feet of a panther, they roared into the lonely desert. His wide eyes wouldn’t part from the sight, at how the blankets, the fabric of sand that mimicked the curves of a body, glistened under the roasting heat, and with it came the harps of the whirling air. She ignored them, focused on the incoming stars. Unlike the earthling.

And the last thing to bid them goodbye were the three suns. At the bottom, the smaller ones, and at the top, the red one with flares of blood. It was almost pleasurable to see them closer, brighter until they left the last layer of Imia’s clouds. The orange sky turned dark, and the stars greeted her back into the home she was familiar with.

And that breath of relief, it won't be until she takes care of one last thing.

“ _So_ , N/N,” the earthling took off his seat belts, wandered over to the back. Probably to take a look around the place. “You take the lead. You’ve been to earth. Or close to it, at least. You can drop me off anywhere in North America. Preferably the east coast. If you can, Gotham shouldn’t be too hard to miss. You can-“

 _Now¸_ it brought her relief, at how the metal pipe she found on the floor easily took out the earthling. Their heads, it turns out, were one of the weakest parts of their body. The clanging sound it made was loud and satisfying as well. It was true. She was sadistic.

“Sorry, _Jason.”_ She dropped the pipe on the floor. “I don’t plan to make a detour.”


	3. The Fleet

_“…CLEAR… NOTHING WITHIN 0.5 LIGHTYEARS... FIXED MY RADAR AFTER THE THIRTIETH HOUR. I REPEAT. NO SIGN OF LIFE WITHIN 0.5 LIGHTYEARS. THE COAST IS CLEAR. FORTY MINUTES INTO WAITING AT THE BELT. RING ME WHEN YOU’VE REACHED MY COORDINATES. THIS IS LIEUTENANT M-812.”_

\-----

It was the limbo that hovered between sleep and consciousness, when it was all but darkness, yet your nose would flinch away if a butterfly were to land on its tip. When you could hear voices, ones filtered by an eerie voice box, unnatural and unusual, and still not pick up on how at that moment, you were tied with coils of melted steel that burnt your wrist’s flesh. And you wouldn’t feel it until the consciousness that took its sweet time finally gives in.

But it wasn’t even that Jason noticed first.

_Holy sweet mother of Merlin was it fucking cold in here._

_Where was he?_

_“ONE HOUR INTO WAITING AT THE BELT. I GOT ENOUGH STOCKED UP TO LAST ME DAYS. BUT ORA, PLEASE DON’T TAKE YOUR TIME. I GOT AN EARTHLING TIED AT THE EXHAUSTS. COME OVER BEFORE IT WAKES UP.”_

Earthling?

Oh no. _No._

Hit him in the head. Feed him some bleach. Comically make him slip onto a banana peel and give him a concussion. This stupid space fiasco was supposed to be something he’d wake up _from,_ not wake up _to_. At least, in his unconsciousness, he was snuggled up in the warmth of his run-down apartment in Drescher, not stuck in a desert planet with a psychotic cyborg being mauled by bandits. It even _sounded_ like a dream. And for a while, it was.

Until the beating at the back of his head took over all thought. The worst migraines were nothing to that throbbing dent at the crown of his head. He was hungry, dehydrated as a rock, and so awfully cold.

All that he realized before even opened his eyes. And when he had, he wished he never did.

 _He_ was the earthling tied to the exhaust, just behind the cockpit where said cyborg that should have been sent to anger management counseling had her hands on the controls twice the complexity of a jet plane’s maneuver.

At first, it was all but his red helmet, the Red Hood, as if to remind him of who he was and where he came to be. It sat on the table across him, watching him sleep.

And beyond that, he could see, the worst of his nightmares manifested into something greater, larger, nothing that he’d sought to think. And it took his breath just as it choked him closer to death.

There were stars beyond what he’d grown to understand. Stars as they were, balls of gas that didn’t twinkle as much as they let out dangerous, mesmerizing flares of light. Thousands of them. _Billions._ Like paint splatter on a dark canvas that stretched on for millennia. Except this was nothing like paint. And it _definitely_ wasn’t anything he’d see looking up at the sky at home. Not one star in that dastardly city. You’d be lucky to catch a helicopter blink.

He wished to see more, but he could only see so much. Though even from his angle, already it was a sight. _This_ is how he’s introduced into the world of outer space, breathtaking as it was: tied to an exhaust pipe with burning steel wires, a grumbling stomach, being held hostage by this maniac.

Jason must have let out a groan too loud because said maniac just turned around from her seat at the cockpit ready to strike with her fists.

“ _Oh_.” His existence was a bother. “You’re awake.”

“Fuck… my head…”

He tried reaching for his temple but the coils only poked at his skin even more.

“If you don’t stay quiet, I have more pipes I can hit your head with.”

“I literally just woke up… _shit…_ ” he winced. “And already, you threaten me to be quiet?”

“So you know you can’t scream your way out of this”

Her voice was just as cold as the chilly air, didn’t even look at him when she spoke. Instead, her eyes were out on the brightly lit canvas of stars behind the glass like it was anything but. Like she would look at an empty, uninteresting drywall.

“No…” he said. “I’m not.”

“Good. Get used to it.”

Her comms went off. _“LIEUTENANT M-812. WE’VE TRACKED YOUR SHIP. DON’T WORRY, WE’RE ON THE WAY. FORGIVE ME. AFTER Z’ARR TOLD US YOU WERE DEAD, WE WEREN’T EXPECTING A CALL.”_

It seems, from how she rumbled like the devil were present listening to her whisper that she would have liked to expect a search party from her _fleet_ looking for her back at the desert. Apparently, that hadn't happened.

And it was immensely difficult to stifle a laugh when it meant his life was on the line, even more so when she was close to smashing her balled up fists into the controls.

_“WELL, I’M NOT. TELL Z’ARR TO GO FUCK HIMSELF.”_

Her message was sent without a greeting, and in the pit of her rage, the seat almost shattered the way she slammed herself against it.

The red helmet went on with its empty stare as if asking him when they were heading back. He didn’t have an answer. Not even for his own sake. “You were never going to take me home,” he asked. “Were you?”

“It was your mistake to believe I’d do such niceties.”

“Believe me. I knew better than to think you’d be _nice._ ”

“So you miscalculated. You thought you could manipulate me. You thought I wouldn’t smash your skull and keep you captive.”

“I would have done the same if you hadn't done it first. I had the _decency_ to think I didn’t have to.”

“A dangerous game, we played. You just lost. And as if I’d waste that much of my time to help you.”

He spat out his blood that’d bled for days in his mouth. Stale, reeked of dried iron. He could smell it, too. The dry air just made it bearable enough not to drip.

“Dropping me off takes like, what, _half a second_ with a ship like this. You’re just fucking evil.”

It was against all light, the only one shining being the star closest to them outside the glass. Still, her dark eyes saw past through all that, and he’d never been looked at with so much disgust. “You really thought it was that easy?”

Of course, it damn was. If she make of it.

But there mustn’t be a word out of him that could either make anything of the situation remotely better than it possibly could be, or spark some kind of reaction out of her to change all this. Jason could annoy her the way of an earworm and that’ll possibly cost him his life if her purpose of turning him in wasn’t of much importance. He could lay silent, still, possibly get on her good side. But that was as if he hadn’t already spent more than a day deserted in a lone planet, thinking that if they both were to fight for their lives at each other’s sides, it might convince her he was on her side for good. He probably wasn’t, but at least she’ll think of that.

“It took us two days to get to the Belt,” she said.

“I was out for two days?!”

“More than that. I had to fix the engines.”

“You should have just killed me,” he snarled. “Maybe you just like me too much.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she sighed. “The Fleet gives us ten thousand credits for every decent recruit. We’re not one to invest in humans, but you seem to be of the… _capable_ variety.”

“That’s a weird way to say I look good.” His chuckling wasn’t much appreciated. “So. What are you gonna do? Pull my brains out? Metal arm? If you’re replacing my skull with steel parts, make it red.”

“I’ll make them pull out your vocal cords to save the universe of your babble.”

“At least I die knowing I’m of the galactic standard.”

She groaned again. “You seem to accept all this.”

“I don’t. I just know my enthusiasm for anything irritates you.”

“It does, which will make ripping you apart even more satisfying,” she said. “Don’t worry… You won't even feel a thing…”

No, he hadn't accepted any of this. Had he lost hope of seeing home again? To have the feel of solid, earthly soil beneath his feet and not have to take long whiles just to stop and breathe, adapt to the changing oxygen levels? To go out and not see stars, as beautiful as they may be?

Slowly, he had, the closer death seemed apparent. Even seeing a familiar’s face seemed unlikely.

“This contraption.” She held up his grappling gun, which he found to have been stolen from his hip. “I like it. It’s mine now.”

“Help yourself,” he snorted.

He never thought he’d miss Gotham so much. That shithole of a city.

The horrors of what they might do to him, torture him, mutilate him, turn him into one of _them_ , these cyborgs stripped of humanity. Already he thought he and his morals were not on par with what people were supposed to have, that he no longer had much of humanity, to begin with. But to be _her_ , and lose what he took pride in having left. No, that might never truly sink in.

“Will I remember everything when they rewire my brain into a circuit board?”

N/N looked out the window, like not at all was a great, infinite universe staring back at her from behind the glass. “No…”

He meant it as a joke.

But she wasn’t laughing.

He had the room, and the time, to dwell on his doom, on his demise he’d never know what to expect out of. Not long after, it all seemed more likely, staring at his face and have the last of what dangling over his nose. N/N got a message from her buddy Ora. Then _it_ appeared.

Alien space ships were never truly depicted at such accuracy that would have rendered him not surprised, but his expectations, or what came with his imagination, weren’t much at all. Their ship was so massive that from behind the window and his limited view, he couldn’t see the whole of it. Though he could tell it was enormous, sparkling in gray and silver like a star with flaring gas. What shone in front, he thought to have been a creature flying in and out of its nose, were smaller ships, smaller than the one he was on, and they scattered about, guarding its tip like a swarm of wasps.

It resembled an oddly shaped aircraft carrier, three times the size of the ships at home. A plasma gate at its starboard side was open for them to fly into.

 _Oh, home._ He’ll never see it again.

He should have been scared. Scared of her. But he wasn’t. He should be with his life. “Easy there, N/N,” he said when she grabbed him by his tied wrists, force him up to walk even with his legs as weak as a chicken’s. As he mumbled her name, she gripped him tighter so her steel fingers would numb his whole wrist.

The door twisted open, and they walked down the ramp. Already welcoming them was a team inspecting the ship.

“M-812,” a tall alien with a nose that stuck out like a tongue, eyes resembling beads on clothing, and his body floating a foot up the air met them outside. Half his face blinded him with the steel. “It’s good to see you alive.”

“That shark Z’arr told you I was dead, too?”

“He was close to declaring it to the General, if not for your distress signal.”

“Where’s Ora?”

A beautiful alien with the coolest looking mohawk showed him as much of a smile he’s seen in a long time out of any of the creatures there were since he left earth. She had orange skin, stood almost half a foot taller than him, and had eyes as white as her teeth. Her face hadn't been replaced, but most of her body had. Her arms, legs, and torso looked much like N/N’s.

It was amusing how none of these phased him anymore. He was in an alien spaceship with cyborgs. It would hit him, eventually. Marveling over the sights was the least of his concerns when death awaited him closer at every step.

Ora shook N/N’s hand. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you.”

“You brought a recruit?”

“If it’s good enough.” She tugged on his wrists. “But I’d settle for half the credits.”

_“I have a name.”_

“An earthling?” Ora watched how his face moved, his hurting hands, his ripped clothing. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have a name.”

“Are you sure he’s for _The Fleet_ ,” Ora eyed him like dirt stuck to her toenail.

“Like I said. I’d settle for whatever scraps we can make of him,” N/N started for the quarters. “For now, I need to talk to Captain Z’arr.”

“Don’t be too pissed at him.”

With N/N frowning as the three of them took to the elevators, the doors swiftly shutting closed, it was only then when Jason thought to just look around, admire the blinking lights, the lift that hovered over the air and held by nothing else, the kind of tech he swore he’d never live long enough to see or might never reach earth with how primitive they all seemed now that he’s seen more.

But even an alien spaceship would save on energy, it seems, when they stepped into a dark room they wouldn’t spare a bulb on. It was all but a glowing circular table at the center, blue like the lakes of Iceland. Ora guarded him at the corner.

The table, it seemed, was a holographic communications system.

And he assumed it to be Captain Z’arr appearing before N/N, the Martian with a crooked nose and dark eyes. The one from the Watchtower, the very same who killed Victor and pushed him into the boom tube that got him into this whole mess in the first place.

Another man showed up in the holograms, someone older, looked no different than an earthling, a humanoid perhaps, with gray hair and a shaking jaw. His face was intact. The rest of him, it looked, was not. From under his dark robes, both his hands were cybernetic, and the feet that peaked out from underneath looked the same. He was sat on a throne, crouched over like his back hurt.

“General,” N/N tipped her head. “ _Z’arr_.”

Much respect for this general, it sounded like. Not so much for Z’arr.

“You’re alive,” Z’arr croaked. His voice was just as chilling as his demeanor. “This was quite the surprise.”

“With all due respect-“

“You never show respect.”

“ _With all due respect_ ,” she contradicted herself. “You had no reason to believe I wasn’t.”

“Except that you fell into one of the Mother Box’s portals right before all your trackers went off,” the tall Martian said. “Did you expect a search party after you?”

“I thought you’d at least try to contact me.”

“And where did you end up? Imia? We’re not far from Earth still, M-812,” he snorted. “It took J-910 more than just a light request to have a whole ship drive to the Belt for your sake.”

“Did you want to just leave me for dead?”

“With it more efficient, yes.”

“Enough.”

The General held out his hand as if the two bickering were right in front of him. N/N was a ticking time bomb by then, so much that if she faced him Jason would be sure to find a vein about to pop somewhere in her forehead, even with it not so possible.

“And you brought an _earthling_ …” Z’arr disgustedly mulled over her prisoner. “What for?”

“If he passes, he might be a decent recruit.”

“The last time we had an earthling at the fleet, he died at the first plunder. Our parts will not be worth the investment.”

“You know. I’m right here,” Jason said.

Every single pair of eyes in the room glared him down.

“A chatty one at that.”

“He seemed capable enough at Imia.”

“Maybe that fault would be more attributed to your weakening.”

“I said _enough_ ,” the General stood from his seat. Blaring blue lights, with not much to be seen but their faces flickering in broken flashes. “M-812. The Fleet welcomes you back.”

“Thank you, General.”

“But your warm welcome does not last. Our mission at the Watchtower did not go as likely as we would have planned.”

“I’m gonna need you to fill me in on what happened, General. I was gone before the invasion ended,” N/N said.

“We failed, M-812.”

“Why?”

“It is _your_ fault just as much as you think it’s hers, Captain Z’arr,” the General interrupted. “The whole fleet is to blame.”

Z’arr laughed menacingly. “For one, the Alpha Target is alive and _not_ in our imprisonment.”

The Alpha Target?

_The Alpha Target._

_The Mother Box. Cyborg._

_Victor is alive._

“Z’arr was supposed to take care of him. How is that my doing?”

“Because this was supposed to be what you were built for, M-812, and even that you couldn’t do. The Fleet knows the mission was supposed to be yours and you could not accept,” Z’arr said.

“ _I_ wanted to take care of the Alpha Target,” she growled. “I volunteered.”

“I decided that M-812 was not ready, Captain Z’arr. We cannot waste another reprogram, and she is far from complete to take on such a mission herself.”

“ _You_ didn’t want to reprogram her and look what it cost us,” Z’arr clenched his jaw. “We lost fifty men to the League. How many more before we give in?”

“Reprogramming her would render the years of training useless. That’s enough out of you. The next invasion should be planned not long from now. Z’arr, a word with you after this.”

Z’arr blinked out with the Martian pouting like a child.

“You said I could be Captain,” she told the General just as they were alone. “Still, you could not let go of him.”

“Z’arr has proven his worth, but expecting him to singlehandedly handle the Alpha Target was not part of the plan. I raised you to be Captain, but you’ve failed your training countlessly, which is why you were not ready-“

“I tried-“

“I know you tried…”

The General took his seat. He reminded Jason of Ra’s.

“But at this point, Z’arr will have to be dead before you can take his place. You’ve failed on your tests, failed on your mission-“

“General-“

“And you treat your superiors with disrespect. The next time a failure is to your fault, M-812, I’ll have no choice but to push through with the reprogramming…”

The silence out of her was deathly.

“I wish you luck, M-812. Prepare the earthling for his tests.”

The General blinked out, and even when Jason couldn’t see how she looked after that bomb he’d just dropped, from how her head crouched over, he knew there was nothing bright facing him on the coming days.

“N/N-“

“Get the earthling to the chambers,” she stepped out the automatic doors. “He better show us well.”

Her voice was more like _her_ , dark and gritty, shallow breaths as if she no longer tried and deep as if no light had sparked anything dead within her in a long time. And the look on her, as if it already wasn’t so bloodthirsty, the cruelty within only emanated even clearer.

Ora took him to a room closed off with a large glass, one where the others could see him well. The cell wasn’t as small as he would have thought, and it was brightly lit, not like the last room. There was no bed, no cushion for him to lay on. The walls behind him of white and silver, it did not look at all like what any menacing prison cell would that would have been the last he’d see. But all the more was it utterly terrifying.

Had it sunk in yet?

In its entirety? Probably not even close.

“What are you gonna do to me?” he asked.

Ora did not answer. The glass closed off, and he was left for the handlers who wouldn’t answer his question either.

Whatever that meant, he wished death could still possibly be the worse alternative.

\-----

No. No, it wasn’t.

Death was more desirable.

Whatever demons he thought he’d left behind have lived to haunt him another day.

Even without much of a resemblance, it was hard to repress the resurging visions. The flashes of black and white. The maniacal laughter. The horrific smile that stretched unnervingly the way it never should, dripping in dark red as if it smeared of his blood. The worst of atrocities manifested into a human who never should be called one. They come every night, every time someone strikes him hard enough for everything to go white, except it didn’t go white at all. It was _him_. He saw him.

He used to act on the resurgences at one point, strike back even harder even when it not so necessary. He used that anger to let it dwell long enough that it hurt himself even more. But that was years ago. Still, with it so constantly coming back, it was concerning how nothing has changed, all save for the fact that it didn’t bother him any longer.

 _“You won't be joking around for long,”_ his guard told him on the first day. _“They’re gonna break you until you snap.”_

Repression. That was all he had to rely on when they came back at times like these. Already he could have sworn all his teeth had fallen out at one point, which he couldn’t prove with his mouth so numb, only to find out they were barely intact when they force him to eat what was close to a live frog, slime and all.

“Have your ribs survived still?”

“Don’t scream. It’ll hurt less.”

“Was that a crack I heard?”

Whatever it was these cyborgs had for breakfast, it sure seemed to set them off for the day to be as inhumanely sadistic as they possibly ever could.

His guard was just as bad as N/N. Another humanoid. Both her eyes had been replaced with lenses, her one muscular arm intact with her naturally toned olive skin, a reminiscent of what she used to be, and the other a monstrous limb of metal stronger than tank.

“You hold up better than the last earthling…” she said and crouched over so she could look at her victim in the face.

One more day.

He dies either way.

Torture and beat every living muscle into eternal bruising was what they wanted to do to him. Make him stronger, find out if he lasts. Only then would they be sure if he were worth the investment. On the first day, he hadn't let the thought of the inevitable dwell too much when he knew it was inevitable at all. That night, the thoughts had proven too difficult to suppress. No longer could he talk much when it haunted him that this was none but a death march of the worst extremes.

On the second day, he no longer spoke, couldn’t look at anyone in the eye. With the ties on his hands and the many instruments they’d used to find out if his skin would last much of it, he thought he’d mastered repression so much that no one could possibly point out any of his worst traumas. That he’d healed enough that even if the world ended, none of it would resurface. Turns out that wasn’t so true. Not as much as he’d like. At the end of the second day of torture, all that haunted his night of cradling his trembling body was the crowbar, the clown’s laughing and shrieks of his name, and the explosion that came after.

“I won't kill you,” the woman told him. “I like you. Maybe I’ll make you one of my pets.”

She left him just at the sharpest edge, with not but a lone finger to hold him up alive. Beat and worn, her torments he could no longer hear. Not after she’d hit his ear hard enough that all he heard from then on were his screams echoing back around his skull.

Had it finally sunk in by then?

That if he survives this, he’d be turned into one of them?

Right then, it hadn't.

“Aya…”

_Until then, it hadn't._

“Enough. I told you not to kill him.”

“I wasn’t, N/N.”

“You are.”

Not until _she_ came in _._

Her voice. Her horrific voice.

“Go find Ora. We got what we wanted.”

Aya, his torturer who’d pass for a wrestler back on earth, spat at Jason’s direction. “I say we want more.”

“We don’t. We need him intact for the replacements.”

“Whatever you say.”

The evil incarnate. The darkest, beadiest eyes.

The days of torture, hunger, stripped of all hope. Every muscle in him ached and burned, almost ripped out of its place against his bones. His bones, shattered and torn, were fractured beyond what he could count.

Still, when his eyelids could be pried just enough to catch sight of _her_ walking into the room, Jason couldn’t bear much of his strength, so much that it was painful to even try to hold himself back. But everything was a pain, either way. It was stupid, and he’d have lost at every possibility. But the moment he saw her standing over him like he was dirt, every fragment of the lost visions he’d sworn to never see again flashed in a second’s time.

“ _You_ …” he growled.

Suddenly, he felt strong enough to charge, even if it were the last of it.

Jason pounced at her unexpecting; his trembling fingers wrapped around her throat. At what skin she had left, he dug deep with his fingernails. His weight sent her back against the wall, hard enough that even a cyborg screamed at the impact.

It was the Lazarus Pit all over again. Rising from the green, thrashing and throwing everything he held on sight. It lasted a second, a second too late to get himself in check. That surge of strength, when the demons overcame what took years to work on, even for so little time, it would have destroyed him.

She grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him off to the other wall.

It dented at his impact, and as he fell, no longer with the same surge that mellowed down just as soon as it came, it was then, and only then, when it came to him that these were his last days. And at that point, he didn’t even care anymore.

The Fleet built her. _Her._ This _machine_. If she’d shown that same strength against the bandits and the guards of the refuse station, they would have escaped long before they had. It was a shame she could be weakened at all.

Because as he laid on the floor, every part of him no longer willing to move, she grabbed him by the chin, made him look at her straight into the black holes of eyes on her skull. And then, right then, all he saw was just that. A machine.

She threw him off.

“That was stupid,” she brushed off her shoulder. “Don’t do that again.”

“I hate you…” he croaked. The first thing he’s said in days.

“Good. Enjoy it while you can. While you still _feel.”_

They’ll rip his brains out, his limbs off his torso, his head from his body, replace it with their own parts so there were two of him.

“Why won't you just kill me?”

_‘Where would be the fun in that, boy wonder?’ he swore he heard. From the voice too familiar, and a face he’d sought to destroy. “Now. Tell me. Front hand?’_

_Hit._

_‘Or backhand?’_

_Hit._

“I can't kill you,” she whispered. “Don’t take this personally. This isn’t torture. This is to assess your body if you're capable enough to handle the cybernetic replacements. If I don’t hand you over as a recruit, they would have killed you anyway. This is the best you could have turned out. Trust me.”

“You act as if this is all out of duty,” Jason spat his blood on the floor. “But you’re not being kind in the slightest. This _is_ torture, and you’re just a fucking psychopath. I’d die before I’d turn out to be like you.”

In a way, it might have been that his vision was barely there, that most of what he saw was this blank white of nothingness, that all he heard was himself and his thoughts that only seemed to grow louder, but he struck something in her, because her mouth was trembling, eyes wide searching for an answer from his beaten face. She was holding herself back from digging her thumbs into his eye sockets. But right then, he didn’t even care.

“ _It was your fault to think otherwise_ ,” she spoke, with the same grit and coarseness in her throat that sounded damaged and broken.

She stood up, left him wailing on the floor no longer with the guards coming over to _assess_ him.

“And you know what I think?” she before she left. “I don’t think you’ll turn out to be like me. I think you’ll be _much_ worse…”

She left, turned her back, and shut off the lights.

Tucked between his fingers, Jason took out a metal shard he’d swiped away from her neck, a part from the steel shell he’d shattered at the impact, and hid it under his shoe.

No.

Perhaps it never truly did sink in.

\-----

A day later, doctors came in. She was behind the glass watching over like a ghost would peer in from their dimension away from theirs. Such kindness they handed out after they’d figured he was strong enough to take it, they feed and inject him with some serum that’s supposed to speed up the healing process.

“His body seems to be alright. Some traces of bruising from past traumas,” Ora told N/N from outside the glass. “No sign of weakness in any specific limb. And he’s a lot stronger than the average humanoid. Like he’d been enhanced somehow.”

“Find out why that is,” N/N said. “He could be an asset.”

_You’d be fucking surprised._

“His resistance sure is astounding.”

“Could be just because he’s stubborn. I had to survive in a desert with him.”

“He might do us good, N/N. They’ll reward you with a lot of credits for this.”

“Mmm…”

At least, what came out of this was that he was assured he was up to alien standards, even for cyborgs.

That night, the serum did its work. His fractured bones, pieced together as if they’d never been shattered. All his muscles eased and soothed until the pain was not more than a numb. And his bruises, though still faintly visible, no longer drew out the worst cries when they so much as press against the floor when he rolled over too fast that night.

And that night was his chance, his only window out of life. The next day, his consciousness won't live to tell him people were waiting for him to come back, that he had friends to go back to, that he had one friend in particular to honor, to remember. _Harper_.

The shard. He’d bent it to be thin enough to pierce through slabs. The moment the doctors left, and with no one outside to see him leave, he poked the shard into the control panel at the left side of the gateway, toyed about with the wires, pressed the buttons until they glowed green. It took a few hours, but it worked. Tim always told him that even the best-developed locking mechanisms can be broken with the right pick, whether it be from hacking or with brute force.

The glass slid open, and through the dark, he limped. A hand to the wall, he followed where he was led into. He needed a ship. He’d figure out how to drive it in time. That, or he takes one of these cyborgs hostage. That seemed unlikely.

 _Weapons._ He needed guns to get this right.

At the corner, two guards resembling the likes of Timone and Pumba guarded the main doors at opposite sides of the archway. It wasn’t locked, and they were turned around, faced the mezzanine that looked over the hangar almost five stories high.

“Okay. What about this. If Z’arr would shapeshift into something with a trunk for a leg, does that mean everything would shift _except_ the leg?”

“I’ve only seen him transform into humanoids. How the fuck should I know?”

“’Cuz it’s not like the steel would shift _with_ him, you know? What if he turns into you?”

“What if he turns into me?”

“Exactly. You have trunks for legs. If he shapeshifts, everything would change except for the legs. Will he look like a muffin top?”

“Are you calling me a mu-“

Grabbing the tusks from behind, Jason pulled the warthog’s whole body to bend over, his knee striking the nape of his very thick neck. Big Ears next to him was not so quick to move, and Jason had ducked before he’d swing his arm.

All it took was one fist to his impossibly weak face, the part that was not made of steel, and the poor guy was on the ground.

“Asshats,” Jason snarled at them.

He pulled their bodies to the corner. Just his luck, they had a few goods strapped to their hips.

Big Ears must have needed more protection. On his side, he had two handguns, blasters that were light to carry. Alien tech, similar to the one he got to play with back at the Watchtower. Newly powered and polished. Good to go. He wore the holsters as well and placed the guns to his hips.

Warthog had knives, mostly. It was ironic that the largest one he had was a butcher knife. But the smaller ones, he could use. There were two with ribbed edges, the same size as the knives from back home. He placed them on the holster and firmly strapped them on. Then there were five skims, ones small enough to quickly be thrown from his fingers. He stole them, too. Lastly, he got a decently sized sword. He wasn’t one for swords, as proven back in the Watchtower, but it’ll be of use.

Then he moved.

Closer and closer into the light. Even with it so dark, he could see it.

Guards were doing their rounds, walking about the cell chambers. He snuck around corners, hid behind crates. At too many close calls, he almost walked into a pair with large blasters over their chests. He needed a distraction to reel them away. Perhaps a riot? Too risky. A shootout? Too many casualties. A fire?

If he starts it away from the enclosed chambers, that should be good.

He had to get down fast. The guards would reach his cell in an hour. If the fire starts from the top floor, he’ll have the time to escape below.

At the corner of one of the chambers, crates were lying about. If those were weapons crates, he’d be certain at least one of them would have enough explosives to draw half the guards away.

“Hey!”

His blaster shot off before he even got a good look on the guard’s face he hadn't expected to see in the dark. Hit him pretty good in the chest, too.

He snuck to the topmost crate, skipped over the ones with blasters and machine guns. He found a hilt and almost sliced off a good part of his nose when his finger brushed against the button and it turns out the blade was made of plasma beaming off its tip. He put them back.

Grenades. _Space grenades._ _Yes._ A whole crate’s full.

Guards were coming. He needed to move fast.

With his teeth, he pulled on the explosive, threw it into the crate, and swung his body over the railing.

_BAM!_

_“What was that!?”_

_“It’s coming from the fifth floor!”_

_“Check the site. We got an intruder!”_

Elevators weren’t an option. He had to climb his way down the balconies. Jason threw his whole body off the railing and wished his jacked self wasn’t a whopping two hundred pounds even in a place where supposedly there wasn’t much gravity. He dropped to the next floor, did the same to the level below making sure his shoes wouldn’t be the cause for trouble. But even he couldn’t hear much of his thrashing, because the explosions went on.

Not even after he fell to the second floor, the whole of the fifth had caught on fire, and it was spreading fast. Bits of metal were thrown just feet away from where he hung. The fire reached the control rooms, the engine rooms, the armory. Hydrants came frantically into the scene, but not even the dozens of cyborgs fighting the flames could handle it.

Finally, he reached the grounds.

A red beam, blasted from one of the guns, burnt off the tip of his hair. “Shit!”

Immediately, he dropped to the ground. A lift cart for the crates was nearby. He crawled to it and used whatever cover he could salvage. The shooting went on. Perhaps the option of a shootout wasn’t as avoidable as he’d hoped.

Jason shot blindly from behind, went on for as long as he heard more blasting. Outnumbered by a lot, he was sure. He couldn’t stay here. He had to get to the hangar.

He kept shooting, then his hand brushed against one of the cart’s levers. Instantly, the whole thing hovered a foot off the ground.

 _Let’s hope this won't end too badly,_ he thought and prayed.

He got onto the cart, pulled on the throttle which surprisingly wasn’t so different from his bike back at home, then drove off the hangar.

Purposely, he ran over the attacking cyborgs, crying in foreign tongue he never knew to be possible out of one’s mouth. He dipped his head, drove past one of the thin walls. He kept blindly shooting behind him as he sped into the next terminal.

_BAM!_

Whatever he’d set fire, it was as flammable as a room’s full of gasoline-drenched toasters, or at least was near to something like likes of an actual bomb, because the whole terminal he’d just left behind was in flames, and the one he was in wasn’t slow to catch on. From the blow, he was thrown off his vehicle.

Another explosion had spread the fire flaring towards the ship at the hangar. The only one of which was the one they’d salvaged from the Imia junkyard. The gray, rusted airship the shape of a dragonfly.

The cart had driven off. Even more debris was flying into the scene and the smoke would kill him and not the cyborgs. Their literal lungs of steel would survive them a gas chamber. Which meant they were coming.

The fire enraged the size of a small sun, and for a moment his vision went the same deathly flares of red, flashing behind his eyelids. He could have sworn his whole face had burnt off, but it hadn't. Times like these he wished he had his helmet. Which, if he was lucky, was still in the ship.

He leapt over the debris, the fallen crates, the slabs from the ceiling torn and in shreds, the carts destroyed by the explosion, even more of the metal chunks he had to be careful flying about. Then there was the shooting. The blasts of red beams. Dangerously hot and would burn off flesh the millisecond it comes in contact.

He got to the edge of the hangar, where the ship, the Dragonfly, was sitting peacefully. From the dilating doors, Jason shot off what looked to be a cleaner caught in the fire, shooting at him with his own gun. He blew him off against the wall and ran to the gates like the sweet taste of heavenly escape. Behind him were the flaring open gates into the unknown galaxy. _God,_ was it breathtaking. The many stars, the endless ocean of lights, and aurora-like flares mimicked the flow of a flower’s gentle petal. He couldn’t wait to drive off and eventually find home.

Then all that hope, so instantly stripped away, was to his demise when a painful grip of a steel claw grabbed his ankles, pulling him so his chin hit the ground.

Whatever it was that caught him, it was dangerously strong, because not even when he grabbed onto the many fallen poles did it stop him from being dragged across the floor like a horse-drawn cart with the strength of a bull. He turned around. The worst of profanities echoed off into space.

 _N/N_. _She_ had the strength of a bull.

She held the ropes of the grappling hook, which _she’d_ stolen from him, and yanked it over her. Jason’s two-hundred-pound mass of muscle no longer was so weighty all of a sudden when he was flying several feet in the air across the other side of the hangar.

His face hit the floor, sure to have broken his nose.

But cosmetics were the least of his worries when it was her cries he heard coming closer, and the sound of two very sharp blades coming for his throat.

With the sword he’d just stolen, it hissed like a cobra in a long and dangerous battle with another of its kind when he swung the blade just before hers would have sliced his face off.

If she was inherently grumpy, often so frustrated, now she was dead furious.

He didn’t know if it was the fire that was almost deafening him, the blades themselves as they continuously shrieked like living beings caught in a storm, or N/N’s screams every time he stopped her swinging her blade.

“YOU!” she cried. “ _DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU JUST DID?!”_

“It’s called a heist!” He kicked her in the stomach. It didn’t put her down for too long. “It’s what I do to survive!”

_“I WILL BURN YOU TO THE GROUND!”_

And something told him just throwing him into the fire would be a kindness to the kind of burning she meant to do to him.

 _“DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE GETTING HOME!? WITH MY HELP!?”_ She sliced his arm. The next one he blocked before it would have completely mutilated him to the bone. _“YOU ARE WEAK! AND HOPELESS!”_

“ _I THOUGHT THIS WASN’T ANYTHING PERSONAL?!”_

 _“YOU WOULDN’T HAVE REMEMBERED ANYTHING AFTER WE WERE DONE WITH YOU.”_ Hit. _“IF IT WAS HURT YOU DIDN’T WANT, IT WOULD HAVE SAVED YOU FROM IT!”_

_“OH, THANK GOLLY FOR YOU AND YOUR GRACIOUS KINDHEARTEDNESS. I ALWAYS DID WANT MY BRAIN REPLACED BY A FUCKING BLENDER!”_

He couldn’t leave her alive. _“I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE!”_ she cried.

_“LIKE YOU HAD ANY.”_

Years ago, he swore to rid Gotham of the scum that litter about through the most necessary means. Sometime after that, he mellowed, realized not every case deemed his means necessary. But when it was called for, he promised not to back down.

Now, it was one of those cases. This fiend. This evil that flew about the galaxy like she owned it. He couldn’t let the likes of _her_ wandering about, endangering others. He’d done his good for Gotham. Why not extend his niceties to the whole of the universe?

At that point, he was but dodging her strikes. He couldn’t win this from just the swords.

Her screams were not so different from what he’d heard from a human, but she was anything but. It was eerie, terrifying. Paired with her dark, unnatural eyes, her cold, steel shell, the lack of humanity he’d see even from the worst evils on earth. What he saw in Imia, shivering from the cold and sitting by a fire share the warmth, all that was but a façade she’d shown to look vulnerable. Not N/N. Just M-812.

“I was wrong…” he growled at the instant their two blades met and he could look closer at her face reflecting off the flares of the fire behind him. “You’re no psychopath. You’re not even sadistic. You’d have to _feel_ that. You don’t have a sense of _anything at all_.”

“ _You don’t fucking know me_.” She cried again, but her sword met the wall just before it would have pierced Jason’s head.

“Face it,” he kneed her in the gut and tossed her across the floor. “You’re nothing but a cold, heartless _android_. A fucking _robot_.”

_“SHUT UP!!!”_

A rampage, it caused her. Perhaps that was the contradiction to be served for his words.

Her horrific screams, stronger than even the echoes of the fire and the debris, the destruction befalling as they spoke. Not long after, he would lose. He can't win against her like this.

The fire. It was spreading to the crates at the corner not far from them. As she almost disarmed him of his sword, he threw the hilt to her face, and the steel was loud as it echoed, satisfying as it pushed her to back off.

Then with his two guns, he aimed for her center, firing like he’d fight off an untamable beast. The beams wouldn’t pierce her chest, and the blasts all but bounced off almost nearly to his arms, but he kept going. Slowly, she was getting blown off. Behind her. Into the crates.

The fire roared like it was blown from the mouth of a dragon, and as the fire caught onto the flammable crates, Jason blasted her into the site.

If it’d been a human, even the likes of him, no one would have survived that explosion. But even her, as relentless, stubborn, and so difficult to kill as she’d proven to be, was thrown off into the walls by the crates, the weapons, the debris that went with her, and underneath the rubble, she collapsed onto the floor.

And at his direction, a limb. _Hers._ Her fucking arm was blown off. Her healing couldn’t possibly fix that. Had he finally killed her?

Jason spared no more of his precious window for a life, even if it seemed so devoid of hope. The ship. The Dragonfly, it stood amidst the chaos. Waiting for him. Calling.

He went into the dilating gates, pushed on the lever to shut it closed. Everything was there, _thank fuck._ The cleaners must have taken their time. Or they didn’t think this piece of crap was worth much work.

On the table, exactly where he’d left it, his Red Hood helmet sat awaiting his return patiently as it often did. Jason almost wanted to kiss it on the mouth as if reunited with a beloved.

He put on the helmet and suddenly he could _breathe._ Then he thrashed his head for some memory of how N/N, or M-812, had started up the ship the first time.

 _Faster._ The fire was catching up to him.

Fuck thrashing his memories. He’d be lucky to remember what happened minutes ago after the torture his head had to go through for days. Instead, even when he knew this might bite him in the ass not long after he thought he’d get to live, he fell onto the driver’s seat, strapped on the seatbelt, and turned on every button he saw like he knew what he was doing. He didn’t.

The Dragonfly’s engines started up, too fast, it seemed, but it worked nonetheless. All the lights went on. The wings started up. The radars and back cameras were shown on the screen and the oxygen tanks were blowing.

Pulling on the lever, and on the control wheel, the Dragonfly levitated off the ground. More of the pirates came into view from outside his windshield, but as much of a shitbag this ship was, it withstood the blasts.

“Holy SHIT-“

Too fast. _Too fast._ The ship soared out of the hangar, out the plasma wall that shielded the oxygenated hangar from the deadly vacuum of space.

The many stars morphed into moving strips of glittering light, swiftly moving past him as the stars seemed grander, deadlier, and even more terrifying the further he drove, and he wasn’t wasting much time into this empty void, so dark, yet so inviting.

He kept with the throttle, didn’t stop, or give in to the thought that there probably wasn’t anything following him. There might be. But he didn’t look back just yet. He kept going. His chest was beating. He was afraid. Afraid of what was in front of him that still had not fully sunk in.

He was in space. _Alone._ He had a ship. But what now?

Before that thought _could_ sink in, and before he could even accept it all unfold, he looked to the cameras that showed what he’d left behind.

The Fleet’s spaceship, larger than a dwarf planet, had its starboard side engulfed in a flame once so unbearable, now just a speck, much like a star. The ship fell into such speck not long after, until it’d gone completely out of view.

Then that frantic beating in his heart, that rush that just wouldn’t allow him to revel into this new reality, stopped entirely until his breath came to a halt at the sight on his screen.

Something was crawling up its hull, fighting the harsh blows in the vacuum as it held its tight grip onto the ridges of the ship’s shell.

And only something so strong, so dangerous, so god-awfully persistent could fight through that and live.

He never knew she could breathe in space. If he had, he would have gone back and _made sure_ she was dead.

N/N, with her one arm left holding onto the hilt of her sword, sunk the blade deep into the ship’s hull, slowly crawling up the cockpit.


	4. The Dragonfly

There was only silence when she screamed, just as it would in the dead, empty blackness of the airless void. With her last arm close to falling off her shoulders, the blade losing its sharpness and grip - she couldn’t afford to have this backfire. Thoughts on the earthling’s untimely demise and the long, torturous acts she swore to be merciless with will have to wait. 

She’ll be dismembered and dead by the end of this if she doesn’t find a way in. 

The deathly cold, the steel on her back crystalizing at the empty vacuum, the concern on them could not be on this excruciating endeavor. The earthling must have caught sight of her because the ship started to swerve about, the worst possible way to shake her off her grip. After all (if he let on) the whole ship would be obliterated by its whiplash before they even get out of the Fleet’s radius. 

With no other arm to let her grab hold of the pipes and ledges, N/N held her grip tight and waited for the sheerest window of stability. Once the ship slowed just enough, she pushed herself hard against the rusty ledges with her feet, propelling her forward. With her blade, she sliced through the shell. If she’d flown an inch further away, she would have drifted off, possibly into the next blackhole. 

A camera at the rear faced her. She made sure the earthling would have seen her face before her foot destroyed its lenses. 

She let go of the ship just as it started to spin-a horrific driver the earthling was-and she could have sworn her tongue was lodged down her neck; Its shell was a mere three inches away from her knee, so close to drifting away and leaving her to float, before the whole thing jumped like a quake hit its hull, propelling her further to the front. 

So much had crystalized on her missing arm. The inside’s wires, rods, and metal plates were stiff and frozen, like a million icicles stabbed her flesh repeatedly until even her blood would stab her. And so much of that pain further pushed her to the cockpit. 

There was a hatch at the top. And it wasn’t too far. Her one last arm was about to disintegrate. In her head, her voice echoed like a cave dweller’s cries for help. 

Nothing matched her strength, her will. N/N hooked her foot onto a slab that stuck out from the rust and pushed her whole body up, which was no different from blowing a feather to land at a very precise spot on a nest and having no use of your hands.

And her blade, as stubborn to die as she was, sliced into the hatch like it was perfectly made to do just that. No longer did she notice her frozen arm, her collapsing skull. She opened the hatch with the blade.

And with the incoming winds from inside the hatch further pushed her away from safety, she willed on, convinced herself there was more of her strength left behind than what was remotely even possible. With her feet raised high, being pulled up to the endless stars, she bit onto the ladder below the hatch and drove her sword one last time into one of the pipes. Then her feet could climb in, and with it, closing the hatch behind her. 

Then all that pain amplified when the rushing air halted at an instant too quick. She dropped to the ground, so close to smashing her head into a stray pipe. The ice melted, and even with it still so freezing, she reveled at the newfound warmth. For a while, she stayed, almost closed her eyes to rest. She hadn't rested at all since before the Watchtower Invasion. The night at Imia didn’t count. She was up all night wary of the earthling.

The earthling. 

N/N forced her trembling self up with just a lone arm to hold her, then lugged down the narrow pathway from the engines towards the cockpit. It was freezing and she barely had flesh that reddened at all, but by the cosmos, was she burning. Like the fire from the ship engulfed up to her brain and stayed, only to be put out once she heard that earthling’s cries, begging her to spare his life. 

If that bastard dared to look her in the eye, she’d gouge his eyes out, destroy him with her fists, and toss him into the nearest star. Then she’d rip all four of his limbs apart with nothing but her bare hands and a dull knife- a ribbed one to make it hurt more, or perhaps just a blade. A tiny blade she’d use to cut off every vein, every artery, every nerve in him that would further heighten the pain, and the other wounds would be cauterized so the bleeding won't kill him too soon. Then, she’d mutilate his guts, stuff his mouth with a brick just so he wouldn’t have the luxury of getting to scream, then she-

 _BAM_!

Her feet flew off the ground, back against the steel walls, breaking the pipes and rods that stuck out the ridges; the pain that let on further agonized her with its horrendous resurges. A clothed arm was stuck to her throat. 

And the eyes she swore to gouge out the minute they look at hers, it did just that very act to her disdain. The _earthling_ stuck his elbow against her throat, and it was then she caught a glimpse of the same blackness in him that hadn't surfaced until she visited him in the torture room. Whatever she’d done, it’d awoken his true face. 

She was thrashing, _screaming_. She could hear, and with her not able to resist, she heard the growl come out of his lips. 

She had a whole fight planned out- even if she would have lost, she always, _always_ , put up a fight. 

But that had passed. And she lost. 

“I ought to kill you,” the earthling choked, “and I’ll be doing the universe a favor.”

“Go ahead…” Her one hand held his arm. “Kill me…”

It hurt to say, but it was the only way she’d go out with the least bit of glory. 

But the built rage she’d seen in him, the torturous kind not even demons would act upon, she saw it right then. If he were kind and merciful, he’d have killed her already. 

Instead of a knife through her chest, or a sword down her throat, or his arm further pushing into her airpipes until her breaths finally stop for good, his hand held none of the things which she expected. Instead was a handcuff to her wrist, plasma beams shooting out of the holes specifically designed to radiate bodily strength at a minimum. 

“Found it in one of the toolboxes. This ship belonged to a marshal.” Jason pulled on the cuffs, and her arm too weak to resist and her legs falling apart into five separate pieces could not interject. She tried writhing, but that was hard to do with just one wrist being cuffed and the other arm too short. 

And how karma had befallen like the strongest tides of an ocean-filled planet when Jason hooked the cuff onto the exhaust, the very same _she_ cuffed him to. Except now, it wasn’t with makeshift wire coils (something she’d easily get out of). The radiation from the cuffs weakened even her bones, all the way up her shoulder. Crouched over, she charged with her shoulder against his chest to push him away, but that was just about all she could do. 

His patronizing tone just made her want to scratch his eyes out even more, however that was possible. “Don’t bother. You’ll be here a while. Consider it a kindness…”

“When I get out of here,” she growled like a caged bear, “you’ll wish you’d just killed me.”

It was painful to hear each time she nudged the cuffs and it’d rub over the exhaust, and the sound echoed throughout the ship, which meant sneaking out of it wasn’t an option. Hell, nothing seemed to be an option. 

“You won't get out of here. Kinda hard to do with just one arm.“

It was like tormenting a rabid bulldog tied to its leash in a cage and standing just far enough away to smell its mangy breaths. She charged again, and if she went on without thought, the exhaust would be destroyed. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll move you somewhere else before you break that exhaust.” He stripped her of her weapons: her blades, his grappling hook, all five of her knives, and a gun in her shoe. “Get cozy.”

Then the exhaustion couldn’t be so easily tolerated. After some time-when her legs were so numb like her torso was standing on a chair and nothing else-her ass fell on the floor, legs sprawled out, and her back laid against the exhaust pipes. So close did her weighty eyelids fall and draw her into vulnerable slumber; even sitting on the cold ground with half an arm sticking out was comfortable enough to drift away. But she stayed awake, stared at the blank walls of more pipes and rods and wires dangerously exposed. 

The earthling was getting acquainted with the ship: testing the controls, fishing for a manual to help him. Not long after, he settled onto the driver’s seat, eyes out on the windshield. 

But with the pain, the cold, the silence that slowly murdered her insides, she used all circumstance to not allow herself to sleep. Focus on everything else, even the pain. Just don’t submit. Eventually, having to allow the pain just to fight submission and vulnerability weakened both her arm and her mind. 

As if her throat was as beat as the rest of her was, she croaked: “Why won't you just kill me…” 

The earthling’s eyes on her were not so kind. “Because you didn’t kill _me_ when I asked you to.”

“Is this revenge to you?”

“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess.”

“You pushed me into that portal first, you impotent moron.”

“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d stopped beating my guts with your shoe.”

It wasn’t clear who was winning, but both sounded equally as close to driving each other’s insides out. “You wish I’d just beat your guts with my shoe after I’m through with you.”

The smelly earthling just snickered, “You won't get to. You’re my prisoner now.”

“I’d rather _die-_ “

“You won't have that luxury.”

The crown of her head was a lot stronger than her radiation-induced arm, and when she smashed it back against the exhaust, a dent formed at the cold steel. With her eyes closed and her nose up to the ceiling, she hoped every minute fighting through the babble and the lack of an arm was a minute closer to having this all end. It doesn’t even matter how. It just had to end.

Then it was quiet again. Everything was going to fall in soon, how her thoughts would fight through her focus on the trivial like how her wrist hurt or her legs weak. Even the earthling, with his idiotic attempts to drive this piece of junk, she chose to think about. If all else would be too strong to fight against, which eventually would be the more she fights it at all, soon enough she’ll break down and break apart, knowing just how much of her life was doomed. 

With falling eyes, and her voice softer than it had been that day with her growling, N/N spoke. 

“You don’t want to kill me…” she whispered, “because you still think you're getting home…”

The earthling’s eyes fell from the brightly lit glass onto the steering wheel, his fingers drumming onto the rubber and listening to them tapping against it. 

“You think I’m going to help you…” she mocked, “that I’m your only hope-“

A gun he had on his hip aimed for her forehead. “You will help me,” he said, the demons she often saw resurfacing as it sounded like. “You think you’re the only one here capable of torture? I used to spend nights sawing heads off people’s necks and stuffing them into duffel bags.”

Everything about her was instantaneously as heavy as it was light. So heavy that if she were to lift her leg, her gums would scar at how much her teeth would have to grit. Light because her head was flowing along to the moving air, as delicate as a cloud’s earthly mist, it stayed leaning against the pipe without her moving a vein until the earthling put the gun back down. 

If anything, she was terrified.

Not of the earthling, not of her arm, nor the fact that she was imprisoned in a junkyard ship with someone who couldn’t fly even a jet. Not even of the unknown out there, which was supposed to be feared constantly with her ventures out into the galaxies. 

She was terrified because she knew all this was driving into a dark dead-end, one they wouldn’t be able to see before the impact inevitably kills them. “You have no idea where we are,” she breathed, the fear she tried to hold back before it shows, “do you?”

She heard the earthling stop with his fiddling with the steers. His heart rate, _oh_ , was it laughable to witness how it spiked at her words. It was chilly in the room, but he wasn’t even shivering. He was stiff, frozen, as she saw his head slightly tilt over his shoulder, to acknowledge that he had heard her. 

“Your people call it the Andromeda galaxy,” she revealed, and was it so deathly for him to hear, “We’re 2.5 million lightyears away from Planet Earth…”

She didn’t have to tell him twice, seeing how his heartbeat was at the thin line between panic and the eventual halt when the shock proves to be too much. The lengths of the issue however, he needed to know. 

“Do you honestly think a rusty ship from a junkyard is going to take you there?”

“You don’t know what you're saying,” he barked.

“No. You don’t know what you're doing. Do you have any idea how many ships can travel fast enough to get you home before you die of old age?”

“A lot-“

“Not many,” she said, “you’re not gonna get a ship with a warp drive that powerful. Trust me. It takes a lot to travel cross galaxies.”

His fists tightened. “You think this is gonna make me pull you out of your misery?” He pointed the gun at her, toyed around with the trigger. 

“I know you won't because you still need me to survive. You kill me, and you’d be lucky to last a week.”

From how his fingers twitched and torso turned away so she wouldn’t see his face, she saw the earthling more and more at loss of hope. But all was apparent, so was his desperation. “How do we get a ship like that?”

“You are pathetic,” she groaned. “Just stop.”

“I’m dying anyway,” he said, “might as well try not to die rotting in this shithole floating in space with you.”

“You humans have always been so naive.”

“I can read you, too. Just ‘cuz you can hear heartbeats and see sweat pour out of my hair doesn’t mean I don’t know what you're trying to do.”

“Yeah. Of course, you do. I’m trying to provoke you so I can get close enough to your gun, kill you, then take you back to the fleet-.”

“No. Not even close,” he held up his gun, “You want me to kill you because whatever’s waiting for you at the fleet is a lot worse than death.”

That was all it took for everything to come crashing down. 

She was afraid of the dead end, the driving to nowhere and the hopeful delusions the earthling was going to waste her time with before death eventually finds her. 

It was what she’d held back from surfacing acknowledgement, masked over with the desire to die when it was all just an escape from something so much worse. 

She blankly let her gaze get lost onto the empty floor. Then there was nothing but the cold and the eerie blue auras, like dancing flares in mid-air, given to them from a faraway star. And it was with the silence, the constant ringing that came with the quiet. It took all her might not to grant her with the luxuries of closing her eyes. 

“I can't go back…” she said, and it was like she whispered a dark secret she never would have otherwise told a soul, “not after you destroyed the General’s ship.”

He was there when she talked to the General. He was there when she confronted Z’arr. _‘The next time a failure is to your fault, M-812, I’ll have no choice but to push through with the reprogramming…’_

She stiffened at every memory of that thought, of the memories of what lasted, the memories she did have were gone, rewritten as if they never happened. 

“They reprogram you.”

He backed off, N/N’s wrist bending the exhaust when she attempted to pounce, but she settled back and accepted her fate. She was too tired to fight. 

“Should I ask what that is?” He sounded softer.

“No.”

“Technically speaking, it wasn’t your fault-“

“I brought you into the ship, and I was in charge when you set the whole starboard side on fire. You let ten prisoners out of their cell, destroyed the hangar, lost half our weapons stash, and killed dozens of my men.”

“Oh.”

It was baffling, the nerve of this simpleton to just turn away when hearing such atrocity was enough to drive her insane. The want to pull every strand of hair out of his scalp until it separates from his skull further pushed onto the tip of her nails. Even with her mind and body as limp as a fruit peel, she had enough in her to at least dream of mutilating this coward. 

He stood from the cockpit and in front of her, he knelt. N/N backed away but the asshole was down on one knee so he was level with her eyes. She was breathing frantically, ready to pick up a pipe or her own severed limb to incapacitate him when needed-even with the odds so slim. 

He, on the other hand, was calm. 

And she could see his face, lit up by the dim blue star, with nothing else but blackness that matched his hair and the surrounding silence. But he inched closer until her bent knees were up to her chest just so they wouldn’t touch his legs. 

And he stared her down just as ominously as she did at the torture room. At that, she held her shivers, held her tongue. N/N forced herself to gawp back with equal force, like two stars battling it out with their angry flames. 

“If I don’t kill you,” he whispered. “You’re stuck here with me until you help me hunt for a decent ship to take me home.”

“You can't-“

“We can't?” he interjected. “Or is it just hard to do? Because there is a difference”

More and more, his blue eyes became bigger a target for being scratched out with her blades. “I won't kill you,” he said. “And you’re going to help me-”

“I’d rather die.”

“Or I send you back to the Fleet.”

He fell on his ass when she begrudgingly pounced, with just the handcuff being the thin border that held him away from his death. Her shrieks, he must have memorized by now, or gotten used to, because he didn’t even baulk. She sneered as if her teeth spilled of lava. “I will end you-“

The earthling waited for her to calm. Her body was screaming, tormenting for her to rest, to just give in and at least close her eyes. “You don’t even know how to fly this damn thing,” she barked. 

“But are you willing to take that chance?”

Back against the pipes, causing another small dent, she fell into rest and let just the cuff hold her to sit up. The earthling leaned over and made sure she wouldn’t miss a stress out of his lips. 

“I’m sorry…” he gulped. “I’m not usually this heartless. I used to… But not anymore. As you can tell, I’m desperate. And so are you. I’ll even take the chance of turning you in to the Fleet so they can give me the ship I need in return. But I won't do that unless you cooperate. So what’s it going to be…”

No longer could she help her lips, her hand, shaking to further expose her and her obvious fear. This was his means to intimidate? Stand so close to her she could smell the desperate lengths he’d go through to survive?

“You’re not so keen on that chance,” she scowled. “Neither of us exactly have a choice in this, now do we?”

The earthling pursed his lips, looked over the details stricken on her face, just as she was looking for signs and weaknesses she might deem useful. So far, all she’d deduced was that this idiotic excuse of life wasn’t much to hang onto optimism, but his desperation was getting the best of him. Not optimism. _Desperation_. And as idiotic as he was, this man could be smart. Might even learn to drive this ship on his own, but she’ll never let him know that. 

“No,” he said. “We don’t.”

Like blades from her eyes driving down his own, finally, after too long, the earthling backed off. 

She hadn't the time to even think about allowing herself to sleep. Before he even settled on his chair, N/N slipped into a darkness that would bring more relief than it would hurt, as much as she’d convinced herself otherwise; Passed out, more likely than it was sleep, because not even her heightened senses woke her up. As wary as she’d grown to be, she wasn’t awoken by the earthling’s toying with the controls or his footsteps that echoed about the wonky steel flooring. 

She was going to need that rest with what awaited before her.

\-----

“Wake up.”

_So close._

So close, and this man would have internally combusted for reasons too graphic for her to describe. She awoke with her aching back wrongfully arched with the way she leaned against the pipes and stretched out her neck. “You’re gonna help me fly this thing today.”

N/N rubbed the sleep away from her eyes. “I’ll help you crash it and save us both from this misery-“

“What did I say? Cooperate.”

If only looks could kill, this man would have been thrown out into the dark vacuums of the most terrifying black holes, or at least be stabbed, repeatedly, with nothing but her nails. She stretched her arm out when the earthling unlocked one side of the cuff, with her making sure his fingers didn't touch even a speck of her skin, then he dragged her to the cockpit’s co-pilot seat beside him.

With her one arm cuffed to the chair and the other with wires sticking out just above where her elbow would have been, the earthling strapped her with a seatbelt, and if he’d just leaned close enough, she would have bitten his ear off for standing so close. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed.

“I’m not,” he eased into his seat. “Now. What do I do first?”

It will be positively agonizing, and he will go down as the bane of her very existence. Like a teenager, her bit lips faced out the blank walls, which witnessed her breathy curses.

“Come on,” he pried. “Are you just gonna stay there and pout?”

Still no sound out of her.

“Okay then.” The maniac relaxed, placed his filthy boots on the control board and leaned back to rest his head on his arms. “Guess you’ll just have to die with my voice ringing in and out of your head.”

“It _unfortunately_ takes a lot for me to die naturally.”

“But you will. Just sit there and tell me what to do. No tricks. I’ll know.”

“Will you?”

“Yes. Because I know you don’t have many options. So stop pouting and teach me how to drive this thing so we don’t just float in mid-space.”

Her ghost fist balled up.

Her silence was taking her nowhere, and the earthling would not refrain from staring, waiting for her to speak up, even as a few minutes passed.

“Okay then,” he shrugged. “I’ll just mess around with the buttons-“

The earthling definitely knew what he was doing. That, or he was purposely this immensely stupid. He pressed one red button and the whole ship quivered like it laid on soil about to eat them up. 

“ _STOP THAT_!”

He pressed the button again, and the shaking came to an uneasy halt. He looked both terrified and relieved, but his grin looked just as equally punchable. 

The exhaust seemed a lot more comfortable than sitting here dealing with his chatter. _Might as well get it over with._

“Pull on that throttle to turn up the thrusters,” she groaned. “You’re running too slow.”

“Throttle on.” The earthling eased on the thruster and the ships gained enough speed to keep them steady. 

“Keep your hands on the control wheel.”

“You think this thing has autopilot?”

“Unless you want all the fuel gone before you even live to see it, go ahead.”

“Okay. Okay. I got it.”

Her gums were going to hurt at how her teeth picked on them just to calm herself. “All those red buttons on the left? Turn them all off. The last thing we want is to give away our location.”

“What are they for?” 

“Turns off all your outgoing signals. They won't find you unless they’ve got a tracker. But keep your eyes on the radar. If you find anything coming our way, pull on the throttle and avoid. This thing doesn’t have the ammo to survive even a Sloop. Now put me back at the exhaust.”

“Not yet.” The earthling did as told and turned off the buttons. “Promise this isn’t a ruse to lead me the wrong way for an ambush?”

“And how could it possibly be a ruse?” She clenched her jaw.

“It helps to be cautious. Do you know where we’re headed?”

She almost forgot she was missing an arm until she tried reaching out to the small screen with the interface displays. “That’s a GPS,” she said. “The Planet Ogawa is our best bet for repairs. It’s not that far.”

The earthling was quick to configure with the interface and a route to the said planet was on the display. “What’s out there?”

“Mostly tourists. Markets. Runaways. It’s as crowded as its sister planet, Somi. There’s a big city with everything the ship needs.”

“Can we get this thing to have the warp drive you mentioned?”

Another internal groan. “It has a warp drive, but it’s too weak. It can barely get out of the parsec with this thing about to collapse. Have it fixed until it’s decent, then go from there.”

“See. You’re not so bad when you’re not constantly threatening bloody murder.”

Bold of him to assume the threats haven’t stopped. In her head, at least. 

The earthling let her sit in the cockpit with the ship on-route at a more manageable speed. N/N drew her line of sight away from him, kept on with the windshields and the fog that built up where the air conditioning was facing. 

Then it grew too quiet. The earthling was leaning his head past the control wheel, almost pressed his nose against the glass and his eyes wider than his lips were parted. 

“What are you doing?” she scoffed.

He probably didn’t even notice his jeans were being ridden down. “I’ve never seen it this close…”

“What?”

“Space.” The breaths out of him, relaxed and sincere. “The stars. _And there are galaxies even_ … I don’t see them a lot.”

“They’re just stars.”

“Those things must be massive. And from here they don’t look bigger than my thumb.”

If there was a way to choke herself with just her tongue, she’d have done so. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I hope not,” he sighed, arms on top of the control wheel as he peacefully laid his chin over his forearms to further hold his mesmerized gaze. “This is too much for anyone to overlook.”

She snorted.

\-----

“They don’t have much. But I’m willing to bet there’s a pantry somewhere for emergencies.”

“Spaceships don’t have pantries.”

The rummaging of the drawers, the cupboards, and storage boxes had not stopped since before she even woke up, and she’d slept through the start of it only because her body needed at least a day’s rest. But she couldn’t have even that with her stuck on the floor anyways. The earthling’s dose on the serum had worn out, which meant he was going to need the food to make up for it. A lot of it as well, with the kind of built he had. 

And it showed how desperately he tried fishing for any speck of food hidden in even the tightest compartments. As he came out of the small supply room, in his arms were bags of dried non-perishables and a few bottles of water, crackers, chips, the sort. It smelled exactly as they looked: bland and tasteless. It could last him a few days if he wouldn’t be so greedy. But already, he’d opened a bag, settled himself on the floor directly opposite to where N/N was confined to and chewed on the non-perishables like that snack bar he’d eaten at Imia. 

“You sure you don’t want any?” He chewed and handed the bag to her. She inched further away. “No.”

“It’s getting cold.” 

The internal groan was going to be something she’d hear possibly for the remainder of her life, which won't last so long this way. 

“I’m sure.”

After a few nibs, he closed the packet. “I’ll save some for later.”

The storage box, he placed on the desk near a window. With it so close, she watched as he sealed it. 

“So do you… never eat at all?”

She’d thought of every possible way she could murder the earthling by then, and her head was getting less and less creative as the day that had gone past. With a frown to shut him up, N/N turned her back away and laid crouching against the wall, closed her eyes, and didn’t speak until she was sure the ship was about to break apart. Thankfully, for that night, it didn’t. 

\-----

“I’m keeping every possible murder weapon out of your way. I have no guns on me. No sword. No grappling hook. I’ve checked the engine room and I’m only allowing one wrench in there with us- which I’ll be holding, so don’t even try.”

“Do you seriously believe I can do much with my one arm being cuffed to you?”

“I don’t know. You’re unpredictable.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

With the cuff’s radiation, her arm wouldn’t get her past the cockpit’s controls if she even gets anywhere near incapacitating the earthling.

The hatch for the engine room was cramped and narrow, could barely fit two of the earthling if he’d shimmied his way to the bottom. On the floor of the passenger’s area, the earthling pried the hatch open and stepped back. “You first.”

Grunting like a bull, she climbed down the hatch and the earthling followed. What was worse than being cuffed to the exhausts, it seemed, was to be cuffed to this clump of walking bile. 

They crouched down the low ceiling until they reached the panel for the thrusters’ fuel.

 _Cracked fuel cells_. If it wasn’t the dangerous radiating smells from the energy containers leaking like a broken skull that’ll be the end of them, the whole compartment was shaking so much that it was a miracle the ship lasted as long as it did. But it’d done its damage. The leak lost them about three, maybe four days of flight time. That and the whole ship’s condition, it probably lost them even more. 

“I’m guessing that’s bad.”

“It is.”

“You think they got duct tape stashed somewhere?”

She ignored him. “We need an extra fuel cell.” 

At a corner nearby, where she guessed the cell might be, a boxed screwed tight was bolted to the wall. She nodded and the earthling dragged her with him as he unscrewed the bolts. Just one fuel cell was strapped inside, safely with enough cushions to last it five battles. At least the Space Marshal was careful with that, as it didn’t look like he was the least bit with everything else. 

“Is this enough?”

“No,” she said just as the earthling took the cell the size of a humanoid’s head with his gloved hands, “but it’ll buy us some time.”

He sat on the hatch, N/N settling beside him, as he worked with the wrench to unlatch the broken cell as per her instructions. “You a space engineer?” he lightly asked after he’d done with the first few screws. With her mouth dry, she turned away. 

“Lighten up,” he beamed. “It’s just a question.”

“No.”

“Were you trained at least?”

“Yes.”

“ _Nice_.” The earthling set the broken cell aside. “Could you hand me that-“

By then he’d at least gotten used to her murderous scorns impaling him with her eyes. 

“Sorry. Forgot you… don’t have an arm… _I’ll get it myself_.”

The earthling started screwing in the new fuel cell while she sat watching. His hand felt cold even without it brushing against her finger. From within the gloves, she could feel his skin stiff and firm, like a thin shell of ice encased it. At the same time, his blood was rushing to his head, his heartbeat quickened, and beads of sweat poured out of his hairline. He wiped it with his sleeve and worked the wrench until the new fuel cell lit up and the last screw was on tight.

“Did I do that right?”

N/N nodded quietly. The earthling closed the engines and went up the ladder for the hatch. 

“Will that be enough to get us to the planet?”

“No,” she croaked.

He stared at her waiting for more out of her response, but the earthling wouldn’t cuff her back to the exhausts. “ _Well_?”

“What?” 

“Do you _want_ to be cuffed next to me for the whole night?”

“ _Fine_ ,” she scrambled. “Get to the radars and widen its range to at least half a parsec away. When you pick up any activity, drive towards it. But keep the speed at point zero zero five lightyears a minute.”

“There we go.” He cuffed her back to the pipes and by then it was a luxury next to the worn-out leather he had over his shoulders. “Have a nice night.”

\-----

It was positively freezing. 

Wasn’t that much warmer at the cockpit, it looked, with the earthling fishing the place for the right controls for the thermostat and failing. There might not be one at all, and she wouldn’t be surprised. That or the shells of the ship’s hull had broken apart enough for the cold icicles outside to be blown in. Not that she knew exactly how that would have worked, but it seemed plausible with how ridiculously cold it was. Colder than even the desert. 

Smoke out of her lips. _Huh_. Didn’t see that often. 

With her back crouched over and her exposed body she tried concealing-even with her arm cuffed to the pipes-she used her knees instead, bent to her chest, trying to stop the shivering. She thought of anything, everything else, but kept her focus on her skin forming frost and the steel on her body to absorb as much of her heat as she could. 

The darkness helped with the cold, too. As if it wasn’t already so dim, they turned off all the bulbs to preserve energy. 0.006 lightyears a minute, and still there was nothing the radars could pick up. 

She tried with her breath blowing against her skin, but it only formed even more of the frost on the steel.

“Here…”

Instincts told her to pounce at the sudden sound, but with her cuffed, she couldn’t. It was the earthling, offering her a blanket he’d found in one of the cabinets. 

She looked at the blanket, then at him. She tried not to let the shivering sound. “Leave me alone.”

“Just fucking take it.”

No. She wasn’t being nice, offering him the blanket for himself. She let her silence speak for her, didn’t move until the earthling eventually gave up and left. 

But just beside her, where she could reach even with the stub of an elbow, he left the blanket for her on the floor, turned away and settled himself into the cockpit with a blanket of his own. 

When she was sure he was asleep, N/N unraveled the cloth with her elbow and her teeth, threw it over her shoulders, and laid back. 

That must have been why the Space Marshal hadn't fixed the thermostat. He had blankets as warm as a bonfire out of sticks. Before she slept, she watched the earthling, his chest rising as slow as it fell, and he made a little grumbling noise after each time. 

\----

“Holy shit-“

Well, it wasn’t as if she expected any good to come out of this at all, much less anything productive, or life-saving; If she were honest, it didn’t feel like much of an objective anymore. With the ship shaking like it somehow came across a hurricane in the middle of literal space where there wasn’t any air at all, she stuck her boot up to the controls and lowered the throttle just to give them any shot of a life. 

The ship slowed, and the earthling turned off the button he’d mistakenly pressed. “ _Okay_ ,” he panted, “I’m putting a piece of tape over that that says _do not press_.”

“Or you could just not press it like I specifically told you not to.”

“There are at least six thousand buttons on this entire control board, N/N.” The stress on her name made her hiss. “I can't remember everything. Back at home the most complicated thing I ever drove was a car with a hood shaped like a bat,” he coughed, then he pulled out a bag of dried crisps he’d set aside and chewed louder than a pig. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

“I don’t care. Push on the throttle.” 

She tried to sound unbothered, but ended up watching him eat the crisps, only just realizing the twisting just beneath her chest that started the past few days. 

“Don’t you mean pull?”

“No. You need to slow down. Look.”

Not far away were white specks that resembled loose crumbs on black fabric. Growing larger as they drew closer, the earthling squinted at the sight. “What is that?”

“That’s an asteroid belt.”

“Do we need to turn back? Or go around it?”

“No. It might not look much from here, but it’ll eat up a good fraction of our fuel if we move up the ordinate.”

“Which means?”

“We have to go through it. So slow down before you crash us into a rock.”

The earthling pushed the throttle until the ship merely floated into the vacuum, and the thrusters calmed enough for the cockpit to grow silent. 

But as they neared the belt, still it was with quietness, the kind she’d prayed for the last few days, _or has it been weeks_? 

Because it looked like the earthling was enthralled by even floating clusters of rocks surrounding them as he gently maneuvered the vessel. 

“Be careful…”

“I am. Don’t worry.”

Any further and his face would have stuck against the thick glass. He might not have even the sense to move away. Thousands of them, as large as the ship they were in, were suspended as if tied to strings. Some were as unmoving as a star, some whisking themselves into the airless space like it had life. Some were dark, some as white as glaring plasma. One the size of half the ship hovered over their heads, gentle like it was a flare of light, and the earthling marveled with it just above the windshield and even tapped lightly onto the glass before it floated away.

“Wow…”

Nearby was a planet she couldn’t recognize, where the belt was orbiting nearby and it shone an emerald green the same as the oceans when it wasn’t so blue. And above it, the stormy, unruly clouds that spattered its skies with gray. From there, the hurricanes she could see, pulling the tides of the green ocean they probably couldn’t survive in. 

She interrupted his gazing and groaned. “Eyes on the belt.”

“Sorry… I’ve never been to another planet before.”

“For fuck’s sake,” she snorted. “Your amusement astounds me.”

“You’d at least admit that looks breathtaking. Even the asteroids.”

“I’ve seen better.”

“Sure. But do you really stop and watch them pass by?”

“Would you stop and watch birds fly over your head?”

The earthling laughed at her. “You must have been traveling a lot in your life to compare asteroids to birds.”

“I have. They’re not that different.”

“If not the rocks, it’s the planet. The stars. At least, get where I’m coming from.”

“I do. You come from a bleak, sad little place with no view of the stars or planets or anything interesting within the parsec that you know of.”

“That is… very true,” he chuckled. 

“Whatever. Just keep your eyes on the- _watch out_!”

He swerved the ship just before the asteroid would have scraped the hull, smoother than she would have thought he’d get away with. A breath of air smoked out his lips, and with that, he laughed. She didn’t laugh with him, but she wasn’t stabbing him with her glares, either, even when she probably should. 

After long, they left the threshold, back into the safety of nothingness, and the earthling pulled the throttle back to gain speed. It was only then when she’d laid back against her seat and shut her eyes to rest. 

“Was there a point where you did, though?”

“Hmm?”

She didn’t sound so hostile that time.

“Where you star gazed…”

Even with the hours that ticked, the hours she couldn’t count, the hours that could not be counted with there not having any definite measure of time, an answer hadn't come up. Not out her lips. Not in her head. 

\-----

The blanket wasn’t going to cut it anymore. 

N/N stuck it between her teeth, bit onto it just to suppress the twisting. She hoped, and fucking prayed they’d last long enough to not get to this point, but what she hadn't thought was how long it’d been since they left. It had to have been a week at least. The earthling grew thinner, with his rationed food and portioned water. Sometimes, she could hear his stomach make sounds and he’d laugh it off while she’d groan disgusted. 

But this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not for another few days. With how she crouched over, the sawed arm clutching to her stomach like it did anything to ease it at all, it grew worse every minute she dwelled. 

The earthling came out of the cockpit and saw her just before she picked herself up and forced her face to be as blank as it could convincingly be, but not even that was enough of an effort. Her lips were close to bleeding. 

“You alright?” he gently asked.

Couldn’t look him in the eye if she tried. It hurt to even move her head.

“Are you-”

Her hissing interjected, and by then it wouldn’t have mattered if she were broadcasted live or if she were left in a ditch. Her cries were nothing she could hide.

The earthling was slow to approach her, like creeping up an untamed, wild beast with an outstretched hand. She forced herself to at least look at him in the eye, have some remnant of pride. 

“You’re hungry…” he said. “Aren’t you?”

To never look as pathetic as a dried fish washed onto shore, hoping a hand was kind enough to pick it up and throw it back into the ocean, that was one of the many promises she’d made for herself, and it had to turn to this to have it broken. With her missing arm, she picked herself back up to rest against the wall, panting like she’d run a lightyear. Then dangerously so, she closed her eyes. 

A gentle ‘ _yes’_ rolled out of her tongue easier than she would have liked.

What she hadn't expected was for him to look at her like she’d told a lie, which she had, in a sense. She said she didn’t eat- never said she had to. The earthling went out into the supply compartments for a minute and took out one of the non-perishables.

“Here…” In front of her, he stood on one knee and handed her the bag.

She didn’t bark nor grimace like she did when he stood so close. Instead, rolling her eyes low and tired, she shrugged and showed the earthling her only working hand being strapped to the exhaust and unable to move.

“Right.”

He gave her the bag where she could reach it. “Don’t eat too- _much…_ ” 

She’d poured half of it into her mouth and swallowed the minute it reached her tongue. Tasteless, bland, but it’ll eventually lessen the twisting. “That was one of our last bags…”

“Hmm.” She almost wanted to apologize.

“You could have told me,” he said. “I wasn’t going to starve you.”

Perhaps he was tired as well. He sounded like it- like he was beaten up. “The only reason I have you cuffed is so you don’t claw my eyes out.”

And it grew worse, the fact that N/N didn’t even have the drive to push him away when the earthling settled on the floor next to her- near enough that if he’d lean in, she could smell his lack of a shower. But that didn’t even disgust her. All it was she could take notice of was the ground that no longer trembled as if it’d been drained of life just as she had been.

“Why did you lie?”

He was sincere and calm, and to that, she wasn’t sure what to say. Closing her eyes wasn’t going to whisk her away from here. And frankly, she had no idea where she’d go if she could. Anywhere else and she’d be dead. Worse than dead.

The earthling was mulling the same way she was, with nothing but the dark around them and the dimmest glimmer of the stars their only bulb. He was fidgeting with his fingers, an odd little habit she’d taken notice of. 

“Pride isn’t worth your life. Believe me.”

Spoken from the heart. She knew because it was beating eerily slow, and he sounded as if nothing truer had left his lips. 

Perhaps it would be that turning point she needed, to fight through her own demons.

“Can you uncuff me?” She whispered, as if she didn’t even want him to hear her ask.

His dead, unmatched silence. Oftentimes, what she’d catch him in, at nights he chose to bask into the quietness and wouldn’t utter a muffle. And with it, came his dark, piercing, blank stare at the uneven floor. He heard her. 

“ _Please_?”

It was so subtle, no human could have picked it up. 

But in the end, he just mumbled: “I’m sorry…”

He left the floor, but it wasn’t to her disappointment. N/N wasn’t bothered, at the very least. If she were him, she wouldn’t have uncuffed her either. 

\-----

On his head, the earthling slid on his bright red helmet, with eyes glowing white and a frown etched where its lips would be. Just that day, they’d rewired his communicators to connect to the Dragonfly, where she can lead him to the fuel cells. On the interface display, the Space Marshal who owned the ship had on its database the ship they’d target, its manufacturer, and access to its blueprints.

The moment the radars went off, the earthling pulled her out from the exhausts and cuffed her to the cockpit. It was coming- fast. Almost three times as large as their ship. “Okay,” the earthling breathed. “What do we do first?”

“We plunder. You have your guns?”

“Yes, I have them in the ba- _we what_?”

“We plunder. You’re going to go in there, take their supplies and as many fuel cells as you can. Why else would I make you find _any sign of active life_ floating around space?”

“Isn’t that, I don’t know, _illegal_?”

“You’re here with a pirate. What other methods did you think I’d suggest?”

“I don’t know. Ask for help like any normal person.” 

“Not everyone’s out to help you.”

“Is this the ruse you told me you weren’t gonna do? Are you just gonna drive off and leave me behind?”

“Cuff me to the exhausts if it makes you feel any better,” she groaned, “but I think I’d be smart enough not to drive away with half a fuel cell keeping me up.”

“Fair enough.”

They drove the ship to the port side of their target and left the ship on hover. The Dragonfly, as the earthling liked to call it, had a Space Marshal’s transport pod- the prime indicator of the kind of owner it has. The pod was a narrow space that had a room separate from the cargo, divided by a dilating door at its back connecting to the ship, and the other, a concave-shaped glass stronger than any metal it broke into. The Marshal steps into the pod, pulls a lever, then the pod detaches itself from the ship and latches onto its target like a magnet drawn by an unseeable force. It was quick to move as well. When the glass side hits the target ship, it opens up and allows the Marshal to get inside and arrest whatever criminal they’d hijack into. Afterward, they get back into the pod and they’d be reeled back in with its connector tubes. It doubled as an escape pod; If needed, the Marshal could just jump inside and leave the ship with enough fuel to last him a lightyear. 

The earthling packed every gun and sword he had on him and stretched his neck. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

“Whatever. Just grab whatever you can find, and follow my voice.” 

“Gotcha.”

The earthling stepped into the pod, and it detached from the ship, quickly propelling itself onto the target’s port side hatch. She couldn’t see him open the glass, but on the interface, a bright red dot was glowing on the target’s blueprint. 

“I see you. The cargo room’s at the center. Take a left, then go straight down the hall until you see an end.”

The red dot followed suit. 

“Who owns this ship?” he said relaxed, and he was taking his time moving down the corridors. 

“I don’t know, but it looks like some kind of high-security prison.”

“How so?”

“There’s a lot of rooms- small ones. And the blueprints I got come from a manufacturer known to work with the galactic federation.”

“The police?” she heard him swallowed. “Couldn’t have picked a less dangerous target, N/N?”

“We’ve been flying for a week. This is our best shot. Have you reached the cargo?”

“Almost. I’m at the end.”

“Turn right.”

It went smoothly, and the red dot on the interface didn’t unexpectedly halt or even disappear. Maybe it was stupid of her not to demand being uncuffed at least for now. If he died, she’d have no way out of this mess. 

“You’re nearing the cargo. See any lookouts?”

“I hear ‘em. But I don’t see- _here_. I think I see the cargo room.”

She could hear air escaping a small vacuum, and what might be a door splitting open. His marker moved forward, and with N/N’s lips between her teeth, the earthling stopped just by a corner. 

“Found the crates for food and water.”

“The fuel cells should be there, too.”

“I’m on i- _shit_.”

There was fumbling, shifting, _hiding_ , it sounded like. If there were crates, he’d probably hidden inside one of them. She couldn’t hear voices from any language she could recognize. But there were footsteps- loud ones. And the earthling cursing beneath his breath profanities she couldn’t even recognize. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Guards…” he whispered. 

She could hear his heartbeat still, and its frantic thrashing soon matched her anxious dwellings, watching over the red dot like it was a life machine holding her up. The footsteps that had gone soon came back but eventually grew fainter at each step. 

After a minute’s silence, the dot continued to move. “They’re gone.”

“Good. The fuel cells. If there’s an engine room nearby, it’s probably stored inside it.”

There was more fumbling she couldn’t see, crates being opened, rummaging through supplies and a lot of it being stuffed into a bag he’d carried with him. 

“I think I found an engine room. I’m gonna try to pry it open.”

There was the sound of the wrench, screws, and bolts being undone. Then a metal hatch swung open, from what she could hear. Footsteps on steel flooring. Exhaust pipes whistling. The earthling coughing through the smoke. 

“Found it.”

“Good.” She watched the red dot leave the cargo room, faster than it had come in. “There might be-“

_Blasters. Footsteps. Roars in tongues she couldn’t understand. The earthling cursing loud enough for the whole ship to hear._

“Shit. Did they find you?” 

“Can't talk now. Kinda busy.”

The red dot was moving fast, all the while he was fighting through a shootout with nothing but two handguns and a blade. He reached the end, turned just as fast as a car would have drifted. Then his communicators went off and the red dot disappeared from the blueprint.

“You there?”

Nothing. Not a sound. 

“Jason,” she swallowed. Outside the windshield, the transport pod hadn't moved.

 _Prepare her funeral_ , she guessed. Not long after and the guards will get to her, if she doesn’t get dragged along if they go into warp drive and disintegrate.

Like the blood in her came to a stop, in her veins and what was left of it. N/N leaned against her seat and stared out into the stars.

_BAM!_

The transport pod should not have crashed back into its place in the Dragonfly the way it did, and its door looked close to just breaking off its hinges when it dilated open and the earthling came running for the cockpit, a full bag of supplies over his shoulder. 

“They’re coming!” he screamed. “How do we get this thing to go fast?”

“Go into warp drive!”

Outside, the guards were jumping out of the open hangars without even a ship or a jetpack to help them fly. Their thrusters were none but at the soles of their feet; the blasters she’d heard not blasters at all, but plasma beams shooting out of the palms of their hands. Their bodies were not suits, nor skin, nor even flesh, but resembled raw muscles of a humanoid compacted within an armor of green over its shoulders and hips.

And their faces were nothing but a horrific skull, cracked bones, with half their jaw missing from their mouth and green eyes that glowed beyond space’s lack of light. 

_Oh._

_So that’s who they messed with._

“Pull the throttle, NOW!!!”

The ship quivered like a hand had grabbed onto its hull and shook it like a baby’s rattle. Then it was the stars, morphed into light strings, and the dark blankness between those very stars burst into inconceivably blinding brightness. The stars that left, with not even light fast enough to catch up to their speed, the Dragonfly tore through the fabric of space and propelled itself into that very point where the light had stopped. 

When the ship found its place about thirty lightyears away from where they’d left, the earthling looked just about as frazzled as a furry animal on its first joy ride. His hair stuck to his forehead, and his eyes locked onto the glass like he’d seen ghosts from his horrific past.

“That was...” he swallowed, scramming to find any coherent thought to muster, “terrifying.”

Frankly, she couldn’t help but do the same. Relieved beyond imaginable, she threw herself against her seat and realized she hadn't breathed since that very shortcoming. 

“Fuck…” the earthling panted. 

“Did you get everything?”

He nodded, pointed at the sack he’d left on the floor with his thumb. 

“About ten fuel cells and a month’s supply of food and water…”

“Good…”

The earthling laughed at himself, grabbed his hair with his hand, and pulled hard enough until he laughed even more. She didn’t laugh with him.

“Next time we steal from a ship,” he sighed. “Make sure it isn’t **Brainiac’s prison transport** we’re dealing with.”

“Noted.”

\-----

It should have terrified her; how the lack of light, the eerie silence, the company of no other but one man, embedded onto herself despite her history of wariness and caution. And by then, she’d gotten used to even the footsteps of heavy boots she was once so watchful of. 

It did not mean she wasn’t careful, or at least anticipating that the settlement would eventually backfire and remind her (once again) why being watchful was never a liability, had always worked to her favor, and has kept her alive despite a lifestyle not many would survive a month of. 

But what was horrifying to know was how he’d taken far too long- too many days- to wait before he’d inevitably attack, to the point where his presence no longer perked up her ears, or bring her sentence to their heights, or at the very least, watch where his hands were so she’d at least know what was coming for her. 

It wasn’t until he’d stood on his knee, knelt in front of her where she slept near the exhausts, blanket over her shoulders and a half-eaten packet of dried crisps at her feet, when she’d awoken from her tireless sleep, facing him closer than she would have allowed. 

Perhaps, it was that day, when she realized her strive for survival encompassed her hostility, and she stared back through the dim flares of light from the Andromeda galaxy beyond them, from the stars, the flames from faraway supernovas from thousands of years ago, and even the comets somewhere she no longer could find. N/N looked startled, cautious, would not admit to being afraid, but she pressed her back against the wall to keep her distance, which was not so much with how close he stood from her. 

Her hand instinctively flinched away just as he reached for the cuffs, and perhaps it was that day when he’d gotten every use out of and dispose her. 

But between his fingers was the key to the handcuffs, and the radiation from the steel powered off. Already, her arm felt firmer- more solid. Bewildered, though without a remark, she watched him remove the cuffs from the exhaust. Still, he did not take his eyes off her. 

“This doesn’t mean I trust you,” he quietly said. “Try anything, and you’ll regret it.”

She had heard him speak with a voice so soft, and that was not the same then. He sounded raw, unfiltered- his demons in an outcry he’d tried to contain. It was a mix of all that: of guilt, sincerity, unwillingness to be inhumane. 

Her throat was coarse, provoked by a sharp nail somewhere in her neck. “I won't. I promise.”

She did not know if she lied, or if it were barely half the truth. 

But he must have taken that judgment for himself, seeing how her eyes would divert themselves away, or if they stayed like an unblinking owl; if they shook, uneased, or if they laid calm and not look away, he watched. And perhaps she was telling the truth, one she didn’t know, because with his face so awfully close, warming her skin with his timely breaths, it was so he could tell if at all it was the right choice. 

He took the cuffs off her hands, set them aside with the key still in his pocket so she would not take it for herself. 

She could tell he doubted his own decision more than he should have allowed himself to give in, seeing as how slowly he moved, watching her wrist stretch and every twitch out of the tips of her fingers anticipating her next move. But she did not attack, not even when she had expectations of her own. The dreams, the wishes, the countless days imagining his many deaths. When given the chance, it seemed, she stayed still. 

It was all but the quiet songs that came with the vast skies, the billion lights, like keys played by a hand so calm and dainty. He did not speak a word after that and he stood, walked back to the cockpit to rest with a gun to his hip. 

N/N took the seat at his side, quiet as to not startle him. She noted his side-eye, however, and how they would not leave until he was sure she wouldn’t pounce. But she did not look back, even when she should be maintaining the same caution. 

Instead, she laid her chin on her now free hand, settled against the cushioned seat. 

“Thank you,” she felt the need to say.

Then, it was as good as dawn.

The loss of an arm cost her a great fraction of her strength. 

If he dies, she’ll die, having nowhere else to go and the whole fleet probably hunting her like a dog. 

And she was never one to trust an earthling: a race infamous for being weak, unremarkable, vulnerable, and naïve. 

But _this_ earthling lived through the storms of a desert planet, survived the beatings for the fleet’s countless physical tests, broke through her grip one too many times (which did not happen so often), and fought through a shootout against Brainiac's minions.

She watched as the Dragonfly hovered many lightyears away from a star cluster of the millions, glittering of many golds and silvers like the shine of many gems, scattered about until their combined light unites at the blinding center. Right then, the possibility of finding a ship strong enough to help her disappear no longer seemed so inconceivable.

So was the fact that Jason just might be her best chance of surviving, as much as it burned her to admit.  
  
  



	5. Ogawa

Five fuel cells gave them their options. One was to spend it all on warp drive, impale the very fabric of space to grant them ten years of flight time into two minutes, and finally release them from the endless days isolated with an uncalled-for companion. However, it would devour their vessel, possibly overwork the engines so in need of repair causing leakages in the fuel cells, which in turn would cause the whole ship to disintegrate and leave them for dead. 

Two was to ease on the drive, travel at a manageable speed that saves the crappy engines, allow them a few lightyears of warp drive, and let it rest for two-day intervals. It assures them their lives, voids the possibility of shattering like a porcelain doll with crystalized skin, and saves the shitty microwave oven of a vessel from internally combusting.

But that meant another ten days with the cyborg.

As much as he’d hoped to rush through this forced company, it wasn’t a choice in the slightest. Neither was death an option when it was the very thing they were running from. But hell, did it even matter when death herself was on the passenger seat with him?

At the very least, it was not an unattractive decision- not even when he was aboard a ship that dented under his feet. In front of him was a new kind of love he’d grown to fall for; a love so incredibly breathtaking had stolen his heart as he spent long hours into the infinite abysses that were its eyes. Behind the windshield’s glass, it stared back at him as though it had fallen in love with him as well. The stars enraptured his soul the minute he flew close enough to look deep into its glaring lights. Icarus didn’t fly too close to the sun because he wanted to soar above the clouds. He flew to the sun because he fell in love with it.

And there were millions of them. Millions of suns. He didn’t know which one to go to.

At the far edge of the seemingly endless space, a swirling, cloud-like magnificence was beyond the many stars that scattered about. Its neon flares of sharp purples, pinks, and deep blues were dancing as if caught amid an explosive burst of light; clouds much like from earth, but stripped and pulled to be as thin as fire.

“I wish I had a camera right now,” Jason leaned into the steer and sighed. “Is that a nebula?”

The cyborg N/N awoke from her light nap and boorishly let out a groan. “Can you stop waking me up _every single time_ you see dust clouds?”

“I _do_ have a camera,” he enthusiastically stammered and shot up from his seat to grab his Red Hood helmet.

“I thought you wanted to save its batteries.”

“The recorder doesn’t take much.”

After he longingly stared at the nebula, recorded its moving strips of dust, the camera caught sight of N/N on her seat with the same irate glare he was sure was engraved on her face for all eternity.

“If you recorded me on that helmet, I will break it in half.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve seen enough of you.”

She guffawed and Jason took his seat.

“ _So_ ,” he sighed, “since this is the last hour of our two-week cruise, what’s next for us?”

“We get this thing fixed, figure out how we’re getting a bigger ship that can travel out of the galaxy.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

“I’ll use it to earn my way back into the fleet.”

“ _After_ you take me home?”

Quietly, though with a language that let on the truth, she nodded, “Yes.”

With that honesty, with his last bits of realistic cynicality screaming at him not to give in so much to her words, a bit of him relieved from the suspenseful fear.

“How are you gonna earn your way back?”

Despite watching the nebula beyond the windshield, her eyes didn’t have half the wonder he probably had screaming out his sighs of disbelief. Instead, she looked at them as if they were none but blank, grey clouds.

“I’m not sure,” Jason heard her swallow, “but I’ll figure it out.”

Then she looked away once more, back at the greying steel like it was just as interesting to ponder on as the star clusters and falling meteors.

An hour passed. Soon, the radar picked up activity from a planet. “We’re finally here.”

“Get up,” N/N poked his shoulder. “I’ll drive.”

“You have one arm, N/N. I let you drive once but that was when the closest obstruction was a thousand kilometers away.”

“This planet’s _obstructions_ are exactly why I’m not letting an earthling take the wheel.”

“One, stop calling me that. Two, I drove through five asteroid belts and not once did I scrape the ship.”

“That’s ‘cuz you flew at twenty kilometers an hour, you dipshit. We can't do that here. _I’ll_ drive.”

“No. I can do this. Sit down.”

He heard grumbling in a dialect he couldn’t understand. He thought it best not to get into that.

“You think I should cuff you again? Before you take the first chance to leave me for space pigs to gobble up?”

“You knew the moment you uncuffed me that it won't be easy doing it again.”

“I did,” he smirked. “I’m just letting you know I’m considering it.”

The interface lit up and interrupted her from possibly jumping on him. On the screen, the Planet Ogawa’s image showed with information on its cities, hubs, and hangars to land on. N/N selected the Central.

What he thought to be just one of the many stars turned out to be a small gas planet until its shifting clouds came into clear. Small, he could say, because that was after they’d pass through uninhabited ones so enormous, he thought the universe to be just as large.

As they drew closer, the clouds no longer looked to be clouds at all, but thin fog the color of earth soil. There were no oceans, no clear views of solid land. The fog distorted into many shades of oranges other than the dry brown. Spirals that mimicked dunes and ocean waves, strips that ringed around its surface. It reminded Jason of Jupiter, a planet he no longer thought to be as far from Earth as he once did.

And at its close side just a few million miles away from the planet was its sister Somi. It boasted the bright blues of an oceanic tide with stripes of neon green on its surface. It looked like a marble he used to play with as a child- back when he had toys at all.

“Is it a gas planet?” he asked, referring to Ogawa.

N/N snorted. “You can call it that. It has land, but it’s far off into its core. Not many live there.”

“What do you mean _not many live there?_ Where do people live?” he bellowed and squinted out the windshield. “Why is the radar picking up activity around the fog?”

“Just shut up and drive.”

That sounded less like annoyed mumbling and more like her content answer. She was unmoving, so Jason did as told and pulled on the throttle.

The second alien planet he ever goes to, and seemingly won't be the last.

Ogawa’s foggy surface parted to let them in, as uninteresting and terrifying as brown dust clouds could be. It blew into their windshield as they slowed and flew further into its thick air. Jason was at the edge of his seat.

A minute into the gassy borders that circled the sky, the Dragonfly reached the end of its transparent walls. And right then he figured why Earth was thought of as unremarkable, even with the wonders it possesses, wonders he’d grown used to. Jason’s awestricken gasps and coos must end at least at some point. But it didn’t seem to be so soon.

“Holy shit-“

N/N’s uninterested scowling he couldn’t even be bothered to notice. Perhaps he should have let her drive. That way he could admire it in its whole, the wonderous gas planet Ogawa.

A city in the sky. That was the simplest way to put it.

There was no sign of solid ground no matter how far down he’d look into. No trees or plant life growing from soil, no sign of rocks, roads, cars, bikes. No sign of oceans from where he could see. Nothing came from the security of solid ground, as if it were nothing to rely on at all. Instead, everything that littered about to create such a spectacle _hovered_ in the air.

By some unearthly technology he might never understand, every structure stood from no foundation built from below. Instead, they were one with the mists and clouds. What was below them instead was this magnetic, gravity-defying circle that levitated every house several thousand feet in the air. Some were skyscrapers that shot up through the fog. Some were flat plates. Some were houses, quaint little shops, markets that stacked on top of one another with no clear road to follow. And some were huts at narrow as a pod.

The sky that surrounded them were remnants the same light brown of the foggy borders above, the same color of rust as the steel that shaped the flying buildings. As advanced as the city relatively was, they all looked to be as old as centuries. The roofs were made of scraps, walls from bent steel. Some were even made of cement, clay, and stone.

But what was most remarkable were the inhabitants.

Every being, of races he never could have imagined to exist, was _flying_ across the air like nothing pulled their feet. At first, they looked to be on their own, defying gravity as if the soles of their shoes were unused, if not a burden. The further their ship flew into the sky city, he saw they had special boots to hoist them, jetpacks that propelled them past the winds, or wings that sprouted out their backs. They soared and played, dove from great heights, and elevated without constraint. They flew from a house to the next like one would if they swam. And that was exactly what it seemed, as the only gravity-defying debacle Jason ever experienced were underwater dives, and it was as close to moving without his feet on the ground as he thought he possibly could. But here it was, people who flew and didn’t realize how astonishing it was.

“I think I just pissed myself.”

“ _Everything_ makes you piss yourself,” N/N’s sneering voice ruined just a tad bit of the moment, but he didn’t let it go further.

“You must have seen this a fuck ton before.”

“I haven’t.”

He _should_ have dramatically turned his head to her in disbelief, but there wasn’t much of that anymore. They’ve flown past star clusters and constellations and absolutely _nothing_ shook this woman off her feet, if there even was a time it did.

But not even she was enough to stir him away from soaring through the magnificence. The ship flew into the rows of shops lined in an uneven line. Just above him, a child a third his size with large ears and green skin flew above the windshield and even swayed his feet as if he were walking. At his side, a woman speaking to a hologram from her wrist. The houses were of different sizes with irregularly shaped doors and clay-made windows that peeped through its inside.

If this was the _first_ planet outside Earth he’s ever been to, he had no idea just how much more of his breath could be taken the further along this journey he’s drawn into.

He once thought paradise would be the only realm to wish for, a world so beautiful and perfectly flawless that not a speck of grey would litter the skies, no dark corner even in the deepest pits. Every field would be so brightly lit, with blooming flowers and evergreens that never die. Petals would fly about in the light winds, a cold breeze enough to nip at the skin, but not even to cause discomfort. And the sun would be so gentle and generous, brightening up the whole of the fields and not leave even the darkest soul behind to dwell. Jason thought only that would be the world he’d wish to end up in, what anyone would want to end up in.

This place was nothing like that. Its skies were dark. Its air was dusty and soiled, polluted by the smoke that dispersed out of chimneys sprouting out of roofs. The houses were of age and were well-lived. Laundry was splayed out of balconies and there was no sign of flowers with dancing petals anywhere, even on the window sills where a pot could have lived in.

But this city was beautiful nonetheless, the kind of beauty that came with rawness, unintentionally breathtaking, a wonder when it didn’t know it was a wonder at all.

Perhaps he will get over it someday. But it didn’t look to be anytime soon.

“So,” he tried calming himself down, “where do we go?”

N/N configured with the GPS. “Saro’s,” she said. “A landing hangar and repair shop at the edge of the city. They can help us. Keep going.”

He pulled on the thruster and sped through the bustling city in the sky. Not long after maneuvering the unfamiliar, the GPS led them into a circular hangar, where a flat plane suspended on one of the lower areas above ground spread out for them to land on. Around its perimeter was the structure the shape of a donut. It was in the middle where the ships landed. People of different races, some looking not too far off from Jason, were mechanics in jumpsuits, working with wrenches and wielding gear on top and below the ships left behind.

And for the first time since it left _The Fleet_ , the Dragonfly was finally granted its rest. On a vacant spot, Jason lowered the ship onto the steel grounds with steam blowing out of the many cracks and crevices from its shell. 

N/N had left her seat before the ship even fully landed. As soon as it did, Jason was out the dilating doors, immediately reveling in the sight of stable ground so much that he was tempted to kiss it.

“Sweet Jesus, I feel like I just learned to breathe.”

“That explains your unoxygenated brain.”

“You’re not ruining this for me,” Jason sighed and stuck his nose in the air just to let it linger in his nostrils. N/N disgustedly groaned and walked over to an approaching alien.

“Are you Saro?”

Even when she wasn’t trying, she _still_ sounded like she was a second away from driving a knife down their throats.

“You might want to sound just a _bit_ less hostile if we want a decent discount to fix this thing,” he whispered and she flinched away from his mouth.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Is that a default thing?”

“ _Are you Saro?”_ she asked again, and this time she _was_ a second away from driving a knife down someone’s throat.

The local that approached them, one with large eyes almost a foot apart from each other and a nose that was nothing more than two holes at the middle of his face croaked like a frog. He was stick-thin, had wrinkled skin as orange as the air, and his hands had six pointy fingers _combined._ He held a clipboard and walked to the ship, running his hand across its shell. N/N pulled out a device with a screen that showed a number. _Money_?

He croaked again, shaking his head at N/N. The cyborg hummed, but she stared blankly at the floor as if to ponder. “What did he say?”

N/N’s good hand rested on her chin, and shoving the device back into her pocket, she grumbled: “They won't accept credits.”

The local nodded.

“What do you mean?”

He croaked again, and N/N listened as she spoke.

“He knows we’re runaways. Credits leave a mark. It’s transferred into accounts so the records will show we’ve been here.”

“Like credit cards back on Earth?”

She nodded.

“How does he know we’re runaways-“

He got his answer when the local, Saro, raised an old wristwatch to show a hologram.

**_Wanted: Fleet Lieutenant M-812. Convicted of Murder, Robbery, Piracy, and Other Crimes. Dead or Alive. Reward: 100,000 Credits_ **

“Why wasn’t I stuck with someone who _isn’t_ being hunted by half the universe?”

She was getting better at holding her fist back from being shoved down his neck, because instead of any death threats, N/N just shot him daggers with her dark eyes.

“We need to pay with something else.”

“And what is that?”

N/N did not look happy listening to Saro’s croaking. Her lips were between her teeth, and her shoulders tensed even after he stopped talking.

“He’s… _pregnant_ ,” she clicked her tongue, “and needs an incubator for the eggs.”

Jason watched the croaking frog man stare at him like _he_ was the anomaly.

“Is he a seahorse?”

“Where can we find an incubator?” N/N ignored him.

 _‘In one of the shops_ ,’ Saro told her. ‘ _At the other side of a city. It’s a small hut with a rusted green roof and a blue tapestry hangs in front of the door.’_

The hangar owner gave N/N a cloak. ‘ _Hide yourself,’_ he said.

Whatever this incubator was going to do to his eggs, it was a lot to be worth hiding a criminal.

Saro directed them out the door just as a ship of tourists stole his attention. They took that to walk out of the hangar.

“Those instructions are eerily specific,” Jason said, “like a quest from an ancient wizard of old.”

“I stopped listening to you five minutes ago.”

“I could tell. You haven’t threatened my life since. Which is a start.”

“ _Yet._ Don’t count on it.”

“Where do we head to first?”

He almost fell off his feet when an alien appeared at his side and sprung out his feathery wings. He shot up the ground like it hurt to walk. “Shit.”

“Unless you can do _that,_ we need jetpacks to get anywhere.”

But as if their luck had the heart to change at all, the line of tourists that poured out the ship followed a humanoid tour guide with a red flag in his hands. They reached the exit near them. “Eyes here!” the tour guide bellowed for the whole group to hear. “Claim your jetpack and _stay together_ as a group! Don’t fly away until I say so.”

Like she’d just left a crime scene behind, N/N pulled on her hood and didn’t wait for Jason to follow suit. At the farthest end, they joined the tourists on their venture.

“I’ve never been a tourist my whole fucking life.”

“For fuck’s sake, just be quiet,” she hissed.

As they reached the end, the expectedly suspicious tour guide eyed them down. “I’ve never seen _you_ two before.”

“We’re new!” Jason said, and it didn’t help that she didn’t even try to aid the rabid glaring when she faced him. “They told us to just catch up when you reach Ogawa. We’ve been waiting for hours.”

There was that little fluttering in the pit of his chest when the guide squinted at him.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “You’re the Paxons! I apologize. I forgot my clipboard at the ship. Don’t mention that in the reviews.” Jason’s uneasy smile was as convincing as a reptile’s wails.

“Welcome to the group Mr. and Mrs. Paxon! We hope you’ll enjoy your honeymoon at Ogawa!”

“Our **_what-_** _“_

“We sure will!” Jason grabbed the two jetpacks and pulled on N/N’s cloak before she’d knowingly lunge for the guide’s teeth. “Thank you!”

Further away from any piece of flesh she could grab, N/N flinched and snatched her cloak away from his hand.

“Stop whining. We got our jetpacks,” he laughed at her embarrassed.

“We never speak of this again.”

“Before you hurt my feelings, remember that it was _me_ who got you this.”

Jason shoved the jetpack into her hands and it _should_ have been harsh enough to make her stumble, but her scowl was unmoved, and she just took the pack and slung it over her shoulders. “Whatever.”

“Okay, everyone!” The guide lifted his feet off the ground, then he was hovering a thousand feet up the air. “Pull on your packs and follow the flag!”

He’s never flown before.

This day, as it seemed, had a lot of firsts for him.

The jetpack didn’t propel him up to heights at great speeds, nor did he have to fight much of the air to make his way. Instead, when his soles left the ground, none had been so quiet and calm. Nothing to ground him, nothing to pull him down. He would have stumbled, but there wasn’t any ground to stumble on. His arms flailed and kept his balance before eyes would turn, but he’d been stripped of his weight and nothing, not even his fingers, were anything he had to carry.

They followed the group up where most of the shops were floating. A city without roads, a sky so full of life. What he marveled over from the other side of the windshield, Jason was facing now without obstruction. With his hand, he let the fog mist up against his arm.

“Where next?”

“The other side of town. These guys can take us there.”

“Come on,” he snorted. “Who said we were in a hurry?”

“I am,” she snarled.

“You can go ahead. That market looks promising.”

“Are you sure you’ve never been a tourist? Because you’re awfully obnoxious.”

Someone shushed them to shut up. He shrugged at her even when it might provoke another vein in her forehead to pop, but he didn’t wait and flew away into the moving crowds that paved their ways into the Central Market, an avenue with shops that spanned almost a hundred stories above air scattered about with no definite place.

And it was right then when no longer could he see much of a vacant sky or anything unmoving within miles. There were lights, in blinding neons and the mixed languages that varied by the thousands. The houses that floated above one another stacked to look like towers that scraped the fog. There were flying machinery, bicycles with wings. There were flying cars and airships and birds and toys that soared the sky. And the people that no two looked alike, they floated as if they were no different from the common passerby back on earth. No vacancy, no space for silence. Every place was just as filled with sound as it was crowded with wonder.

“Miss me already?” he said to the approaching grouch that hid her glower behind a hood.

N/N’s pack propelled her beside him but she wouldn’t look at him in the eye. She grumbled: “The real Mr. and Mrs. Paxon caught up. I had to leave before they caught me.”

Jason should know by now that laughing at her would only cement his eternal grave, but he did anyway.

“This isn’t the way to the shop,” she barked.

“Trust me, I want this to end as much as you do, but I want to _at least_ try to ease off the ass and stomach pain of spending two weeks in a crappy spaceship with you. Now _excuse me_. I see a fruit shop and I’d like to eat something that isn’t dried crumbs for once.”

The menace that should have left if she had any sort of sense to relieve them both instead chose to follow him. “You already made sure I wouldn’t escape, haven’t you?”

“I told Saro if you tried to take the ship without me, he gets both the incubator _and_ the bounty on your head. I wouldn’t piss him off and guarantee your one-way trip to the galactic federation.” His smirk angered her more. “Not a complete idiot, now am I?”

Slowly he started to understand the curse words she mumbled beneath her breath and it was far more vulgar than anything he could ever say on Earth. If he did, Alfred would probably scrub his tongue clean with detergent. _He missed Alfred._

Jason paved his way through the buzzing crowd that flew over his head and under his feet, much like a bee would fight through a crowd of other bees swarming around the same honey pot. As he let his dried stomach be drawn further to the odd fruit stand at the corner right, N/N flew to stop him in his tracks and blocked his way.

“I can't go alone,” she hissed, “they’ll call the police. _You_ have to go in there and get it.”

“Then wait until I raise my taste buds back from the dead.”

He was surprised her teeth hadn't broken from how much her jaw was clenched. Jason pushed her aside and moved over to the stand.

“How long is this gonna take?” she whispered from behind him.

“I just want to _eat._ Relax. Don’t _you_ need to eat something and actually taste it?”

He landed on the fruit shop’s porch and stepped into its quaint little doorstep. The room was narrow, with only two rows of wooden boxes housing their produce. He stepped back when a man with a trunk for a nose pushed him out his way and accidently bumped into N/N.

“ **Hurry up.** ”

“These fruits are… different.”

“What were you expecting,” she groaned. “Earth fruits?”

“What’s the closest they got to an apple here?”

“I don’t care. Just pick one and go.”

They looked more like human organs than they did fruits. One was a dried nut the size of a watermelon but had the insides of solid crystals that would impale his innards. Another was a type of pea that had a sign showing a regular man turning into a beast with tentacles out his nose. “What the hell is that?”

“Don’t eat that.”

“No shit. What about this?”

He picked one that looked like an orange from earth, but had the darker brown of a coconut with hair sticking out of its peel. “Doesn’t look too intimidating.”

“Half the stuff in this room will kill you in a minute.”

“I’ll happily take that chance.”

He paid the vendor with a quarter he had left in his pocket from earth. He sniffed it, bit it with his teeth, then shrugged and handed him the fruit. Jason followed N/N out to the porch and split the fruit in half. Thankfully, nothing alive crawled out of the peels. And the sap was a pleasant surprise.

“Not bad,” he chewed on the pulp. “Has a bit of a sting to it.”

She disgustfully watched him devour the fruit with her teeth grit and a sickened frown like he was eating literal shit and nothing edible. “Oh sorry,” he mumbled with food in his mouth, “want some?”

“No.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“Not even a little.”

“More for me.” He ate the fruit like it was caviar, then pulled on his jetpack to take him to a shop across that sold trinkets and handmade toys that looked like it should never be ten feet near a child. They were in baskets and sacks, hung onto the walls of another small home. At the far end was a woman with two heads toying with her watch. He took out one of the toys: a sharp bear trap the size of his hand, and almost sliced his fingers off with its teeth.

“You said you’ll be done after you eat. “

“The last time I interacted with someone and not have my life on the line was almost three weeks ago.”

A doll was sitting at the top of one basket, the kind that would come with needles to stick to its ass, and someone, somewhere around the world, just suddenly drops dead. “Let me guess,” he said, showing her the doll, “you had one of these.”

“I might.”

He put the doll back in the basket. “This is one hell of a flea market.”

“It’s a market with things from all over the universe. You come here to trade if you don’t have the credits. That’s why that last one took your quarter.”

“And you’ve never been here before?”

“Not this one.” N/N took her arm out of her robe and took the bear trap in her hand.

“Wanna buy that?”

She snorted.

Right after she put it back in the pile, Jason picked it up. He whistled over at the counter and flipped another quarter to the two-headed woman who caught it with her _claw._ She eyed it, licked it, then shrugged and waved him goodbye. “All yours,” Jason said as he handed the toy to N/N.

“I didn’t say I wanted it.”

He threw the bear trap at her anyway. “Just keep it.”

“I don’t want it.” She threw it back.

“I don’t think this place has a refund policy. _Keep it._ ” He shoved the toy back once again, making sure not to touch her, and looked at her in the eye.

“We should at least act like allies. We both want that ship.”

“Just because we want the same thing doesn’t mean we’re _allies_.”

“That’s why I said to pretend. _Keep the toy._ You’ll like it.”

N/N studied his face, as she often did as he’d grown to notice. A thing of hostility, it was, and she wouldn’t look away from him even with the thousands around them rushing about almost screaming into their ears. With the claw trap in hand, she shook her head in silence, shoved it in her robe, and hid her face when they flew off the toy shop. Despite him taking his time, N/N stayed at his side with a foot distance behind him.

A bike with a steam-powered engine drove past and almost hit him. He heard a cry from the driver, which he assumed to be either an apology or another profanity-filled cry. A group of children, beings with wings for ears, chuckled as they pointed at his face to remind him that _he_ was the alien. Then there was a woman with a head that sprouted into two tails instead of hair, and she wore a bright dress, flowing at her graceful dancing as her foot pushed on the wind as if it were solid ground. There were even petals that trailed her back. A ship the size of a sedan flew over his head, roughed up his hair, and blew N/N’s hood off her head. She hurriedly put it back on.

“ _Hurry up._ ”

“One more shop. Then we go. I promise.”

It was going to be at the expense of her throat with the amount of groaning she did that day.

A two-story house made of metal scraps and plates housed a shop with familiar objects. Its door was makeshift, stolen from a fallen ship, and hinged to the archway to fashion an entrance. When Jason stepped in, there was no one else inside except a little girl behind the desk, but it was a shop that sold many things that didn’t look like they all came from one place. As he stepped closer to a shelf, he realized he was looking at _books_.

“Holy shit,” he took out one of the hardcovers. “These came from Earth.”

“You read from these?”

N/N didn’t sound as disgusted as she was curious. Taking one of the books from the shelf, she flipped through the pages. “These are covered in dust.”

“Back when they weren’t all digital,” he said as he ran his hand through the cover. “ _Love in the Time of Cholera._ Not my first choice, but I’ll take what I can get.”

The little humanoid girl with braids on her hair came up to him and mumbled something he figured was asking for payment. He gave her a quarter, though the look on her face wasn’t as enthusiastic about the piece as the last two shops. She placed it on her palm and stretched out her arm to ask for more.

“Jeez, it’s always the kids.”

Another quarter, and another. At the fifth coin, she seemed satisfied.

Then Jason almost fell on top of N/N when the little girl’s jaw grew to the size of a shark’s, with hundreds of sharp teeth under her lips. Her eyes went white, and as she opened her mouth wide, she threw the coins on the bed of her tongue and swallowed in one go.

The girl’s mouth shrank back in size and she settled herself behind the counter.

“I, uh,” he gulped, “I think my soul just jumped out of my body.”

N/N shoved him away from her. “We’re leaving.”

“Right.”

Further along the laid-out boxes, Jason picked out the jars, bags, and little sacks that held more food. He found one package that stood out from all the others, one he was particularly familiar with back at home.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he gasped. “They have _popcorn_.”

“ _Let’s go.”_

“Hey, Jaws!” he waved over to the girl. “I’ll take this!”

He threw two quarters at her and the girl caught them with her enormous teeth, then she smiled sweetly and waved back before Jason went out the door.

“Is that _earth_ food?” N/N asked. “I thought you said you were done with dried seeds.”

“These aren’t _seeds_. This is _popcorn._ These babies never expire. We feast tonight, N/N.”

“I am not eating that,” she grumbled as she flew off the shop.

“Won't hurt to try. We have to cook them, so you’ll have to wait.”

It was his turn to follow her trail, passing by the busy crowd with no clear traffic regulations to tell them where to go. “It should be down this path,” N/N pointed towards the other end. “No more pitstops. We’re going.”

“Right behind you,” he said as he pulled on his jetpack to catch up to her as they reached the heart of the city, where most of the people walked around and mingled with other beings. At the distance, just above a high tower that floated on two propellers, an orange star that took up half the sky gleamed through the fog. It peeked from under the brown sky and lit up the floorless world enough to make him squint when he looked on from afar. Still, it was chilly, though the light granted the place a warmer breeze.

All was well for a moment, and Jason was getting the hang of the jetpack. N/N was quick and didn’t look over her shoulder to check if he was still there, but Jason kept up with her speed.

Until there were gasps, cries from children, crowds parting, and whispers he couldn’t overhear. N/N kept going, even as the cries turned to screams. From so far, as he could tell was getting nearer, was the roar of an engine so powerful, it drove birds from a mile’s proximity away from the area.

Suddenly, the sun was no longer so bright and the people no longer so bustling and busy. From thousands going in all different directions, the swarms of the city moved to just one direction: _away from where they headed into._

Jason shoved through the crowd and caught up to N/N, who was standing still, dead on her tracks, and her eyes locked onto the sight before her.

And as nature had often been so cruel with its theatrics, the fog and smoke, blown by the flailing arms of the slow stampede, parted for the source of that very roar he thought to have come from a storm. It was a **bike.**

If he could call it that at all. It didn’t even have wheels. Instead, it was powered by two thrusters at its feet with raging fire shooting out of its pipes. The headlights glowed a terrifying shade of blood red, blaring through the smoky air as if the rays had any power to move it to its will. Three mufflers shot out of its back, pointing up to the sky to worsen the smoke. And in front of its enormous handles was a skull, stuck to the front as if a warning if anyone were to come close. Almost every surface was covered in spikes; the rods resembled bones.

And what was worse: he had seen it before in photographs and video recordings from the Titan’s files. Dick had dealt with this guy himself. The man on the bike- if he was even a man.

That man, with paperwhite skin as cold as the moon, almost looking like it was painted onto his flesh with dry powder, had long, thick locks of black hair that rained down his shoulders. His eyes were as red as the blood on his headlights, eyes painted black to cover them like a mask. He wore a black vest too little to fully clothe his enormous physique, and enormous he was. The dude stood at nine feet tall.

If none else gave it away, the sharp hook chained to his bike did.

They call him **Lobo.**

“ **LIEUTENANT M-812,** ” he roared with a voice that broke the sound barriers like a lion’s cry while a cigar stuck between his lips. “ **THE MAIN MAN WANTS YOUR BOUNTY.** ”

“ _Shit.”_

N/N shot out of the crowd as fast as if out of a gun’s muzzle, a long trail of smoke from her pack tailing behind her. Jason followed that smoke, drove himself out of the screaming crowd that scattered over different heights. Above and below him, rushing to safety as people boarded underneath space crafts, hid behind shops and homes, and flew further up the atmosphere until they reach the fog. The screams would deafen him soon, and the only thing worse than a stampede, it seemed, was when that stampede was a flying swarm.

“N/N!”

She knew a fight she’d lose when she saw one. And she was right at that. Ten Titans members couldn’t make a dent on this horrendous creature if they tried.

His ass almost turned inside out when beside him, the fish hook the size of his torso slung too close to his hip. It was aiming for N/N.

“ **THERE’S NO USE RUNNING,** ” Lobo cried as his bike tore through the crowd. **“GET OVER HERE.** ”

“ _Do these things run out of battery_!?” Jason frantically screamed as he reached her side. N/N looked over her shoulder and dove faster down several feet. Around them, the shops locked their doors as the people inside watched from behind their windows. There was nowhere to hide. Not even an alleyway to turn to.

It seemed that was a yes. The bike drew closer, and none else was there for them to hold onto. “You have a plan!?”

N/N looked up. Overhead, a ship with one lone thruster on its trunk sped above the crowd, fast enough to outrun their packs.

Without even a word out of her, N/N shoved through every living being in her way, rose from the heights like a metahuman gifted with flight. He couldn’t catch up, not with her using every bit left of gas in her pack just to reach the ship. She flew above it, faster with her body held straight. Then, without warning, the maniac dropped herself on top of the windshield and punched through the glass with her fist.

She threw the pilot off the cockpit.

“N/N, you little shit-“

Jason raced through past the thousands crippled with their screams and pushed even children out of the way. The pilot was falling fast, without a chute or a jetpack to slow him down. He could pick out his screams from everything else. As he fell past him, Jason turned off his thrusters and dove past the thick fog, down great heights until his ears would bleed from the pressure. The floor was a long way below, but he didn’t want to find out just how much that distance was.

Grabbing the pilot in his arms, Jason pulled on his jetpack, used every bit of strength he had left to rise back up to the closest roof so he could put him down.

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

The poor pilot had no words, as his lips were as pale as the rest of him. He passed out on the roof and Jason went for N/N’s ship.

Lobo was tailing her. There were no guns on his bike, but his hook was aiming for the hull. He drove faster, as the monster seemed to ignore him catching up. When N/N took a sharp turn headed west, Jason caught up to its shell and tapped- _punched_ -through what was left of the windshield to jump in.

“ _You know, I don’t usually condone hijacking,”_ he cried from the passenger seat and threw out the empty jetpack.

_“Shut up and shoot at him!”_

Jason poked his head out of the ship as N/N drove the ship with just one arm. With his new guns, the blasters he stole from The Fleet, he shot at the bounty hunter mercilessly as if any further his skin would disintegrate. It didn’t look like it did.

Lobo pulled on his throttle, held his _palm_ up to block the blasts, and sped faster for the ship. The hook was stronger than even the wind, and it forced the air to blow against him when Lobo spun it in his hand. Over his head, he threw the hook to land on the ship’s shell.

“He got us hooked like a trout!” he screamed, and he went on with his guns as if they made even a speck of a difference. Lobo hooked the chain to his bike, slung his trunk of a leg over his seat, and started crawling up to their ship through the thick chain.

He cried through the engine thunders. “The fucker’s coming this way! Keep going! I’ll keep him busy!”

“Are you _crazy_!?” she yelled, and it sounded less like a cry for concern and more a disbelief from an immensely stupid outburst, but Jason had climbed out the cockpit before she could say anything else.

Lobo threw the cigar off his lips like that fiasco was nothing but an exercise. “ **AN EARTHLING. HOW PRECIOUS.** ”

“What is it with you guys _calling me that_?!”

The bounty hunter chuckled as he grabbed his hook and swung it over his arm. “ **I WANT THE LIEUTENANT. YOU CAN GO.** ”

“I would if she wasn’t my only ticket home.”

He ignored that, of course. Then Jason slipped out just in time before the hook could have impaled his skull.

Getting anywhere near this guy was a death sentence. He was _huge_ , and it didn’t look like his punches could do more than sting his flesh. Jason tried hooking his legs over his shins to get him off balance, but that was like uprooting a tree. He backed away before his fist the size of his head would have smashed every bone in his chest, dodged his knee before it shattered his ribs.

Then the ship turned over a full loop until he was flying. He landed right onto Lobo’s back.

Grabbing him by a headlock as he stood, Jason held onto him like a parasite. They were back at the Central, where the houses started to _move,_ floating over nothing as if they fled the scene just as terrified as the people were. Lobo, irate with such a pest, grabbed Jason by the back of his jacket and flung him over his head to the ground. The burst of pain from the base of his spine came after Lobo had thrown him off the ship completely.

And it was by a sheer miracle that the ship was at the maximum distance away before a fall like that would have been lethal. On a rooftop, all he got was a terribly bruised shoulder and a throbbing head. Gasping at the immense pain, he forced himself up, watched on as Lobo reached the cockpit with ease, and started punching through the glass.

Jason looked around, at the people that fled, then below the rooftop he was on. A house, not a shop, with a flying bicycle parked on its porch. He climbed down the roof and frantically knocked on the door.

The child that greeted him by the window was shaking. In fear, he watched as Jason pulled out a few quarters he had in his wallet, pointed at the bicycle. He left the coins at the doorstep before he sped out of that house faster than even a jetpack could have taken him.

Not so far off, Lobo had broken into the ship and grabbed N/N by the collar as if she weighed the same as a sack of potatoes. And the menace he was made sure her fists couldn’t reach his face if she ever could make a dent on them at all. She punched his arm, dug her sharp nails onto his white flesh. Her legs flailed as they aimlessly tried to kick him away, but that was to no use.

He’d taken her to the edge of the ship, back to where his bike was hooked onto.

That’s when she used her _head,_ with what probably had an indestructible skull of steel, and _slammed_ it against Lobo’s nose like it were an anvil.

At that, she took out the bear trap, pushed it against his hands until it pierced into his skin, and what was probably the first time to ever have happened in his career, it loosened Lobo’s grip on her.

Only for N/N to fall off the ship with her hood lost in the wind.

She screamed, hopelessly, with her limbs flying about in the fast-moving winds that changed their currents to her fall. She was falling fast, and even if she would have survived if it were any other circumstance, she probably won't if it meant falling into Ogawa’s forgotten _core._

Thankfully, someone needed her to get home, and that someone wasn’t willing to cozy up to _another_ psychopathic cyborg just to have a shot of getting his life back.

Jason, with his kiddie bicycle with flapping wings rushing past those very changing winds, sped below her and aimed for her arm, but instead got to grab her ankle. N/N hung upside down, unappreciative it seemed when the whole of the planet was rushing under her head. She waved her limbs about in panic and cried: _“PULL ME UP!”_

_“I’M FUCKING TRYING!”_

A great bit of his strength diminished at her weight, but it was too late to do even that.

Lobo leapt off their ship, leaving it to crash somewhere down where they can no longer hear its impact, and with his arms and legs spread out, he dove for N/N.

“Son of a BITCH-“

When a large being with an unpronounceable real name comes straight for you, you don’t tend to see much of your life afterward play out. It’s usually what came before that flashes like an old black and white movie, one that had to be turned by a lever just to project onto a wall.

Lobo grabbed both of them by the neck, dove for the nearest surface he could find, a two-story building with an edged roof, and smashed against the bricks that held it together. It was a surprise the whole thing hadn't completely shattered.

Almost thrown off the roof, they saw him unscathed, with arms thicker than even a _body_ save his fall when he slammed his fist onto the roof. Jason and N/N climbed up the top with their not so unscathed bodies and grabbed the last of their breath.

And N/N, unwilling to give up her life just yet, took her blades out of their scabbards.

Jason kept shooting, aiming for the weak spots on his head even with it not so promising for an effect, as N/N jumped for the man head-on. She swung her swords, sliced his hands when he tried to block her blades with just his palms. Lobo suffered a knee to his chin when N/N spun with her foot out. And at that, Jason smashed his head with his closed fists from behind.

Lobo turned his attention to Jason, who then had to make sure he couldn’t get close enough to his guns. N/N leapt over his shoulders, trapped Lobo’s neck with her legs as she tried forcing her blade into his eyes if not for Lobo prying her hold off. Working together, fighting together, even then, even when it helped, they could not subdue him.

Lobo threw N/N at Jason, sliding down the roof with their limp bodies. Before he could have time to pick themselves up, Lobo grabbed them _both_ by the neck, a hand each squeezing their throats, and held them up with ease until their feet were too far from the ground.

Lobo laughed, and it was so horrifying that it hurt to hear. “ **DON’T FEEL TOO BAD. YOU BASTARDS DID BETTER THAN MOST.** ”

His voice was maniacal, cruel, and more thunderous than any storm cloud. His horrific-looking face, a pale so white it was eerie, and his red eyes the shade of blood, would forever embed themselves into their heads right before they’re shut out forever.

They squirmed, screamed, but they couldn’t do much of that with their throats closed up. Their legs swung like worms on loose soil, and they felt as such being so helpless and weak. Not even with his prying hands would it be enough to loosen his hold.

He tightened his hold on N/N’s neck and her cries echoed out the fog. “ **I NEED YOU ALIVE, LIEUTENANT. YOU’RE NO GOOD DEAD.** **NOW GET ON MY BIKE.** ”

“S-stop…” Jason stuttered, and all the more did it make him laugh.

Before he could squeeze his throat enough to snap his spine, Jason reached his arm out, unknowing to Lobo, to N/N’s side pocket where he knew she kept his Credit Device.

He was shaking, and his wrists were too weak to even hold his hand up, but he prevailed and showed Lobo the screen.

His very thick eyebrow shot up his creased forehead, and his eyes looked just a bit darker than the glowing red that blinded them just then.

He dropped them to the ground, and the gasps of breath strained even the muscles on their necks.

“ **THE MAIN MAN HONORS THE CONTRACT-“**

“But there isn’t one,” Jason croaked and held his neck. “Her bounty is an open offer. There isn’t a word you have to break.”

N/N looked at him through the hoods of her eyes, though she did not have anything in her to respond.

 **“YOU HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY?** ” Lobo boomed.

The vile creature concealed his chest with his large arms, looked over the two squirming like helpless nematodes in a petri dish.

“ **I WANT ALL OF IT.** ”

“Y-you,” he choked. “Her bounty’s only a hundred thousand…”

“ **YOU WANT ME GONE? PAY UP.** ” Lobo crouched over N/N, held her head down against the rooftop floor to crush it. Her screams were unlike anything he’s already heard.

 **“TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND. NO LESS.** ”

That was all she had in her account. Her life savings, all she’d probably earned in her endeavors as a fleet member. How much of those she worked for, how much she plundered, Jason might never know.

“N/N…” he whispered low enough for her to hear. “Give him the money…”

“ _Screw him- AGH!_ ”

Something in her head _bent_ when Lobo pushed further. Louder, firmer, Jason pleaded. “N/N!”

At the last outburst of a cry in horrific pain, N/N reached for the credit device on the floor.

His smile was just as ugly as the skull on his bike. Lobo let go of her head, the bent piece snapping into place as he did, and N/N sighed in relief as her body fixed itself from the many wounds.

Lobo held out his own device in his hand. N/N snarled at him through her teeth, forcing herself up with her one arm- _did she really just do all that with one arm? -_ and held her credits above Lobo’s hand to send two hundred thousand credits clean from her account.

“ **ALWAYS A PLEASURE.** ”

“Get out of here, you fucking toad.”

Lobo whistled for his bike, and it flew to his side like it had a life of its own, and waved at the two before he disappeared into the fog.

\-----

“I don’t steal. If anyone asks, don’t tell them I robbed a family-owned business.”

“We didn’t steal. The place was deserted and you left three quarters behind.”

“ _We’re_ the reason it was deserted in the first place, and I doubt alien tech incubators cost seventy-five cents. You have to stop stealing.”

Saro looked surprised to even see them intact, having heard of what happened, but it was a pleasant shudder when Jason placed the glass incubator on his table. The thing was as heavy as a grown man and lugging it there was not an easy task. His croaking sounded appreciative, however, so that meant their ship was going to be in better hands than if it weren’t.

N/N had her hood down, didn’t think it was any use hiding anyway, and she watched the mechanic toy around with his new gift.

“Intergalactic currencies work differently. A hundred credits could be worth millions back on earth, but you’d be lucky to get a decent meal with that money in some planets. Likewise, a few earth coins won't get you a single credit, but if you trade it right, you can get a bike or a small ship.”

Jason pinched the bridge of his nose. “I used my quarters to buy a toy, a bag of popcorn, a book, and a weird apple. Are you saying I-“

“Got played?”

Saro’s cry for joy when he placed his eggs in the incubator sounded more like a chicken’s shrieks than a frog’s.

“Yeah. You did. Especially by that little girl.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

He’s never seen N/N smile, and he wasn’t betting on seeing her smile _ever_. But even with the same frown, the same hooded eyes, he could tell she was amused.

“Do you have a place for us to stay?” she asked the frog/chicken.

He led them to an old barn, looking not much different from the farmhouses back at home. But this wasn’t earth, and the farm animals there were drastically different from the cows and pigs that lived in haystacks and picket fences. It was on a decently-sized lot as well, with a barn at the center, a small house of wood painted in deep maroon, and was well-kept and clean. Around it was barren fields, soil he must have excavated from somewhere to place on top of the anti-gravity foundation, and grass that stood as tall as a man.

Only a couple of animals were inside, thankfully. There was a horse with no snout, no fur, and instead was covered in light blue flesh that gleamed of its smoothness. The other resembled a ram, but instead of horns on its head, it had tentacles. Thank Christ, they were locked up and asleep.

“I’m assuming we sleep there.” Jason pointed at the two bails of hay at the end of the house, which, sadly, was the most comfortable looking amenity he’s had in weeks. N/N didn’t complain either, and as they walked further for the haystacks, the odd farmhouse revealed a black fireplace made of steel between them. _Finally,_ they get some warmth.

Jason set up the fire, and N/N wouldn’t divorce her blank gazes on the coals that burned, on the flames which he knew wouldn’t hurt her eyes if she looked on too much. She was quiet, though her frown never changed.

He thought it best not to be as silent, not if he wanted to get out of this alive.

“Listen, I,” he swallowed and closed the fire, “I’m sorry I made you hand over all your money. I shouldn’t have shown him your account. That was stupid.”

The warmth was new but more than welcome. N/N was tired, he could tell, because she didn’t fight off gravity’s pull from dragging her eyes solely onto her hands and nothing else. “It was…”

He didn’t know if he should laugh at himself or if even that would be too cruel. But she hasn’t jumped on him yet. That was something.

“But don’t be sorry…”

It _was_ something.

“Thank you,” she said, and despite the warmth, she sounded like she was shivering. “I could have died.”

She couldn’t look up at him in the eyes. It was okay, though. She didn’t need to.

“I owe you one…”

“No,” he gently mumbled, “I mean you technically do. But don’t worry about it.”

For someone who didn’t have that much flesh, and claimed the opposite as if it were true, she was easily cold. Her arm couldn’t conceal much of her chest, so Jason took to putting more coal in the burner and opened its hatch to let out the heat.

“You’re a lot stronger than most earthlings,” she whispered. “Why?”

That made _him_ smile. The first in a long time.

“You're impressed by me?”

Caught off guard, at the same time she probably expected such a response. She ignored the question.

“You’re enhanced. Are you a metahuman?”

“I’m not,” he settled. “But I _am_ enhanced. In a way, I guess.”

“How?”

Jason pursed his lips, felt much of the words out of him to be carefully picked out. He was soft, tried hard not to say anything too loud else it was a lie, which it wasn’t. It just sounded like it was even after all those years.

“I was thrown into a Lazarus Pit. Imagine all the healing serums in the world poured into one pot and stirred with a magical sorcerer’s stick.”

“Why were you thrown in there?”

Then, he no longer had the words to pick out at all. Nothing came to him, not even when he knew what to say. He just couldn’t.

He didn’t realize he was busying himself with the bag of popcorn from his jacket, placed it in one of the pots the barn had laying around, and started cooking so he didn’t have to talk.

“It’s alright. You don’t have to tell me.”

Because she wouldn’t tell _him_. Because she had her share of stories. Because she wasn’t one to tell it to others.

The kernels started popping. _How old could these possibly be?_

“Your strength impresses me, too,” he whispered, “just so you know.”

A nod out of her he assumed to be a thank you. He might have even caught a glimpse of her eyes on him, but he wouldn’t hold it against her.

“You’re impressed by a lot of things,” she scoffed. “Even by floating rocks.”

Again, he laughed. It might have just been the way she said it, but they really were just rocks.

“I’m not. Not by anything on earth, at least. Space is beautiful, but back at home, everything’s shitty and dark. Nothing amused me anymore.”

“And the people?”

“No. I work alone. And when I did work with others, it didn’t last. We fought all kinds of things, even Lobo a couple times. This wasn’t my first dance with him.”

“It wasn’t mine, either. Half my crew have bounties on their heads. He hunts us down like dogs.”

Above them, what they hadn't noticed until they realized the place was chilly even with the fire on, was a large window neither of them could reach to close. The fog cleared at night, and it was none but the now-familiar stars.

He didn’t bother and stuck to piling more hay into the coal. Eventually, it was warm enough.

“Want some?”

Jason held out the pot of popped kernels for her even when she’d knowingly decline. Disgusted at the sight, especially with what spectacle popcorn turned out to be, she shook her head.

But he didn’t give in to her declining. N/N hadn't eaten in days.

Eventually, she gave in to his bugging and took just one piece, sniffed it, then chewed.

“It melts in your mouth.” Jason took a piece for himself and shoved the pot closer to her.

“Lobo wasn’t working for the federation, was he?” he asked, and N/N didn’t have to be asked twice.

“No. He would have killed me if he did.”

She was no longer shivering, but her voice felt cold. Cracked, like her throat at been broken.

“It was Z’arr.” Jason could feel her fear, even when she tried to conceal it. “The federation doesn’t care if I’m brought in dead. Z’arr only wants me alive.”

“But Lobo is a man of honor with his agreements. He wouldn’t have taken your money if he was hired.”

“Because it wasn’t an agreement,” she swallowed. “Z’arr’s offer stands for every bounty hunter in the galaxy.”

That fall of spirits, the pull no one can resist, he let it happen, because right then she’d never looked so distraught. Was it fear?

“We have to be careful. There will be plenty more.”

“I know.”

She’d eaten a third of the pot of popcorn and even some of the uncooked kernels. Admitting to it might not be ideal, but it was amusing to watch.

“You like it?” he laughed.

N/N stopped, swallowed the last piece, then brushed her palms together to rid of the oils. She wouldn’t dare look at him in the eye but subtly, enough that he’d missed it if were any darker, N/N nodded.

“It was good…” she admittedly whispered.

Jason watched her, realized he didn’t look away until some time.

“I know what to do…” she said, the sternest she sounded that day, that week, devoid of uncertainty.

“The General won’t reprogram me if not for the Captain’s advice. Z’arr’s advice. And when he’s gone, the Captainship is turned over to me, so I’ll hunt him down and kill him. I’ll have the Fleet to myself. It’ll spare my crew from his bloodshed and they’ll thank me for it.”

She breathed in, slowly, as if her lungs could only take so much, and faced him.

“Z’arr has a ship that can take you home,” she whispered. “Help me, and it’s all yours.”

The weights he didn’t know he was even lugging around, so suddenly, they were lifted.

Should he trust her?

Should _anyone_ ever trust her?

But her desperation couldn’t afford her another betrayal. He didn’t have to trust her. He just needed to know she couldn’t break that trust if she wanted.

“I’ll help you,” he affirmed. “But from now on, we are _allies_. I won't threaten to send you back to the fleet, and you’ll stop with your head bashing. We work together.”

A hand for her to take. A symbol not to be ignored.

Without taking too long, N/N shook his hand.

_“Allies.”_


End file.
